Senator Collins of Maine said she believed that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford experienced something traumatic, just not at the hands of Mr. Kavanaugh. I believe Senator Collins said that to placate the #Metoo mob, not because she actually believed it. I believe Christine Blasey Ford was lying, through and through, in her injured little girl voice, like a bad imitation of Truman Capote.

I believe that the Christine Blasey Ford gambit was an extension of the sinister activities underway since early 2016 in the Department of Justice and the FBI to un-do the last presidential election, and that the real and truthful story about these seditious monkeyshines is going to blow wide open.

It turns out that the Deep State is a small world. Did you know that the lawyer sitting next to Dr. Ford in the Senate hearings, one Michael Bromwich, is also an attorney for Andrew McCabe, the former FBI Deputy Director fired for lying to investigators from his own agency and currently singing to a grand jury? What a coincidence. Out of all the lawyers in the most lawyer-infested corner of the USA, she just happened to hook up with him.

It’s a matter of record that Dr. Ford traveled to Rehobeth Beach Delaware on July 26, where her Best Friend Forever and former room-mate, Monica McLean, lives, and that she spent the next four days there before sending a letter July 30 to Senator Diane Feinstein that kicked off the “sexual assault” circus. Did you know that Monica McClean was a retired FBI special agent, and that she worked in the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York under Preet Bharara, who had earlier worked for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer?

Could Monica McLean have spent those four days in July helping Christine Blasey Ford compose her letter to Mrs. Feinstein? Did you know that Monica McClean’s lawyer, one David Laufman is a former DOJ top lawyer who assisted former FBI counter-intel chief Peter Strozk on both the Clinton and Russia investigations before resigning in February this year — in fact, he sat in on the notorious “unsworn” interview with Hillary in 2016. Wow! What a really small swamp Washington is!

Did you know that Ms. Leland Keyser, Dr. Ford’s previous BFF from back in the Holton Arms prep school, told the final round of FBI investigators in the Kavanaugh hearing last week — as reported by the The Wall Street Journal — that she “felt pressured” by Monica McLean and her representatives to change her story — that she knew nothing about the alleged sexual assault, or the alleged party where it allegedly happened, or that she ever knew Mr. Kavanaugh. I think that’s called suborning perjury.

None of this is trivial and the matter can’t possibly rest there. Too much of it has been unraveled by what remains of the news media. And meanwhile, of course, there is at least one grand jury listening to testimony from the whole cast-of-characters behind the botched Hillary investigation and Robert Mueller’s ever more dubious-looking Russian collusion inquiry: the aforementioned Strozk, Lisa Page, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bill Priestap, et. al. I have a feeling that these matters are now approaching critical mass with the parallel unraveling of the Christine Blasey Ford “story.”

The Democratic Party has its fingerprints all over this, as it does with the shenanigans over the Russia investigation. Not only do I not believe Dr. Ford’s story; I also don’t believe she acted on her own in this shady business. What’s happening with all these FBI and DOJ associated lawyers is an obvious circling of the wagons. They’ve generated too much animus in the process and they’re going to get nailed. These matters are far from over and a major battle is looming in the countdown to the midterm elections. In fact, op-ed writer Charles M. Blow sounded the trumpet Monday morning in his idiotic column titled: Liberals, This is War. Like I’ve been saying: Civil War Two.

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

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One result of the Kavanaugh brouhaha is that we’ve seen the gay baiting rule clarified by the Left Wing High Priesthood (standup comics). They have determined it’s commendable to revile, humiliate, and degrade any gay person who opposes their agenda, e.g. Lindsey Graham. Such gay-bashing in no way soils one’s position atop the high moral horse of political correctness.

In contrast, I’ve always thought that well intentioned adults should argue without resort to playground taunts: you’re queer, you’re fat, you’re ugly, yo mama binge drinks with frat boys, etc. If the smugly self-righteous Bill Maher were capable of moral introspection, he might realize that an enlightened liberal engaging in gay-bashing is (dare we say it) a smidgeon hypocritcal. Yes, even if the gay in question has committed the sin of wandering off the ideological reservation. Aren’t they entitled to their own opinions?

I must confess that in the past I have violated the high standards which I now advocate. Therefore, to avoid any offense or defamation against persons, living or dead; henceforth I will use only indecipherable, coded language to mock Anderson Sphincter’s cooper.

You alluded to an attitude I also see widespread among “liberals”. These proponents of identity politics insist that anyone in one of their categories (gay, black, hispanic, feminist, etc) must tote the ideological party line or be viciously attacked.

How dare anyone on the left-wing plantation have the audacity to think logically as an individual. It won’t be tolerated by the Maoist red guard in charge of the Democratic party. Free speech is permitted only if ideologically correct in those Saul Alinsky re-education camps which were once Ivy League Universities.

By the way, Neon, your liberal, globalist friends warmly embraced Lindsey Graham and his closet when he supported their agenda. The snarky comments only started after he was scared straight by the execution of his buddy John McCain. Yes, execution.

Elrond, the curious death of John McCain is something generally known to an inside crowd, so I would not expect you to believe. But John Kasich (Ohio Governor and former Presidential candidate) did make a Freudian slip on CNN. See below, “It’s been less than 24 hours since John McCain was put to death.” youtube.com/watch?v=tnMzFGlHGzk

I’m surprised he lasted as long as he did with a glioblastoma multiforme. The natural history of such a tumor pretty much invariably ends in execution. Death by cancer. The 5-year survival rate for those diagnosed over the age of 55 is about 5%. Longer term, it approaches zero, but then, of course, that is true for everybody, though George Soros, the old vampire, may be immortal.

Questioning the death of John McCain as an execution Elrond is questioning a conspiracy to do him in, isn’t it?

In the old days when I was a kid, people were very trusting of authority and the government and believed pretty much everything that they were told. They did not question anything that they were told, until the JFK assassination that is. That was such a ridiculous, bold faced lie that even small children could see through it. I once served with an old soldier whose father was a hotshot detective in Philadelphia. His Dad often worked with Arlen Specter throughout his time on the force and Arlen visited their home for frequently. One Thanksgiving after the assassination, my buddy Larry asked “Uncle Arlen” who killed President Kennedy. Specter turned to him and chuckled and said, “Well it sure as hell wasn’t the patsy that Jack Ruby shot!” Take it or leave it, from that point on, the pendulum has swung to the point where many people see conspiracy just about everywhere and in many cases where I am sure it is not, but what can you do? Once lied to, liars can never be trusted again, unless of course you have memory or intelligence issues. Was Jumping Johnny McCain done in or did he just die? Who cares, all we wanted was for him to go away, and since these sellout scum do not retire and live their golden years like the rest of us do, any way is a good way. At least until term limits are finally instituted.

That last part was a joke. Nobody here is dumb enough to believe that the sellouts will ever put a limit on how long they can sell us out . Greed has NO limits.

The political rifts being sown now will make it increasingly impossible to govern the nation or transition to a post-industrial and post-financial society in any smooth and sane manner. Our decline can be managed, but it will not, given the polarization present now in our society. This will ultimately lead to America cracking up into small, isolated remnants as the crisis deepens.

You may be right, John, but the future is too dark to see. I suspect the strength of the central state is now too strong to allow a break-up of the nation.
However, as Mr. K pointed out last week, we are approaching ungovernability and it might be necessary to impose a more authoritarian rule to maintain order.

People are walking away from Omelas, shotho. The USA has hollowed out its economy, it’s ecology, it moral standing, and it’s non-nuclear military. All we have left making us a superpower is the nuclear weapons.

The wretched child in the cellar whose suffering pays the price for (almost) everyone else’s happiness and prosperity does not seem to correspond to any individual or identifiable group. If anything, it’s everyone (to varying degrees, admittedly, and some far sooner than others).

And those who “leave” – or opt out, more accurately – where can they “go”? Le Guin thought, like Dostoyevsky and William James before her, that it was morally imperative to reject such a bargain.

“What price happiness?”, etc.

I rather like Golden Earring’s take:

Help, I’m steppin’ into the Twilight Zone
Place is a madhouse, feels like being cold
My beacon’s been moved under moon and star
Where am I to go now that I’ve gone too far?

John,
I agree. …And that’s the most important point in all this hoorah: The mistrust of formerly “trustworthy” institutions. This is the upshot of all-or-nothing political chicanery and messaging.

As an offshoot of that very factor, when JHK opines:

“What’s happening with all these FBI and DOJ associated lawyers is an obvious circling of the wagons. They’ve generated too much animus in the process and they’re going to get nailed.”

I would disagree. There will be no “nailing” (as in disgrace and jailing); there will be an ostracizing of these individuals from the banquet table of looting, and they’ll be disallowed from the line outside the revolving door of “public service” (yeah, right) into private corporate graft-taking. If their “lives are destroyed” by such an outcome, tough shit, join the rest of us powerless lumpen.

“The mistrust of formerly ‘trustworthy’ institutions”-ozone. I think you are correct ozone. Watching the machinations of the Republicans, from delaying a Supreme Court nomination, to refusing to release many thousands of records from the Bush administration, ad nauseum, has only cemented my cynicism more strongly. The behavior I’ve seen would be wrong regardless of which party did it. My own take on Kavanaugh wasn’t based on his behavior from thirty years ago, it was based on his behavior during his confirmation. The Supreme Court is supposedly the gold standard when it comes to the judiciary, and he didn’t meet my expectations of what a Justice should behave like. His threat (could it be taken any other way?) that “What goes around, comes around.” did it for me. What his elevation to the court says to me is: Now it’s payback time mother fuckers. This whole mockery of the political process only increases my distrust of BOTH political parties, as well as the highest court in the land. So for the Republicans, I don’t think that losing the mid-term elections matters so much, since they’ve gotten most of their goals accomplished. So what if the Democrats win the house? It’s terrible to see what’s happened to the world’s greatest deliberative body.

Please don’t distrust the highest court in the land. The left is now focused on delegitimizing the Supreme Court. Leaving only mob rule, once the Rule of Law no longer exists. If we lose the Rule of Law, as JHK is fond of saying – nothing will matter and anything will go – in the worst possible ways.

Ron, I think the Rule of Law, or at least the intent, was bowdlerized by the Republicans when they refused to give Merrick Garland a hearing. Everyone who is honest knows that they were looking for someone who would assist in furthering
their political goals There was nothing innocent in their actions. Pretending that that the Supreme Court is neutral anymore is foolish. Of course Justices will tend to lean one way or another, but the expectation is that the laws are interpreted as fairly as possible. However, like I said above, my problem is the machinations they went through to secure Kavanaugh has already rendered the Rule of Law a moot point. I hate losing the Rule of Law as much as you do, and I mourn that loss.

We can go back even further, to 2010 and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United. Our federal government is now for sale. The late Antonin Scalia tried to turn the clock back to 1787.

Had Kavanagh been on he court in in 2015 instead of Kennedy, the gay marriage decision would have gone the other way. It may not be a big deal to you or millions of other Americans, but once the Republicans have finished with one minority group, they may come after others. Every once in a while, I have to remind my Chinese American friend that he is not white and would make a convenient target if the Republicans wanted to stir up trouble. Then there are the Jews, a convenient target of white hate groups for at least a thousand years.

Ron,
I don’t understand what you’re so worried about here. Everything that Trump does or says erodes public confidence in our great and glorious institutions. The mob rule that you speak of will be at Trump’s command and guiding hand for directing its snapping jaws; isn’t that a good thing? Rallies! Hurrah!

The coup de gras should be delivered to the Democratic party while its faint and bleeding. This country seems to be begging for a good hard lesson in autocratic corporate rule; it’s the only way we’re going to learn, so let ‘er rip…

I’m not worried. The workings of those who would subvert the Rule of Law, are too easily transparent. If the “Supreme” Court is delegitimized, don’t by inference, all lower courts, Federal, State & Local, lose their legitimacy? It’s called decapitation.

At the point in time, not if, but when there comes societal breakdown, from whatever cause, the preservation of the Rule of Law is paramount. Without it society simply cannot function. With no established order, the mob rules. Read any post-apocalyptic fictional accounts (TWMBH), and as society re-organizes itself, the Rule of Law is the first thing established. As it must be. An important takeaway from such works.

The mob rule I speak of, will not be at Trump’s command, the mob rule I speak of, is already probing the wires in Portland, Oregon. Check out what’s going on out there. Antifa continually & openly using violence violating citizen’s rights, while the Portland Police Department observes (stands down).

Betcha’ your next gig, that the responses are being very, very closely watched. Police do nothing by design, citizens do nothing out of fear. Guess it’s open season. Until the Proud Boys show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re violent white nationalists. Seems to me they stand for people’s constitutional rights, without starting anything, but when assaulted, they sure as f**k finish it.

You’re way smarter than that man. I see it in this forum every week. Step back another fifty yards, and take another look.

Yeah, that’s the fundamental issue. A bunch of white baby boomers who cannot get their heads out of their asses and see that the world has changed since their 90%-white society of the 50s and 60s formed their youthful impressions.

They’re going to spend all their time arguing this arcana while energy-based immiseration descends upon us all. Restructuring society around electric transport (trains for longer distance travel, maybe electric bikes to get to trains) was once possible. I think that that window has slammed shut.

Maybe it just makes more sense to fight about Kavanaugh in light of the impossibility of preparing for the Long Emergency.

Thankfully, us white baby boomers who embraced our cuckolded fates at the mercies of the left are on the way out. From 90% white in the 1950s, we’ll be replaced by a 60% white generation radicalized & welded into one power in the new age of identity politics.

Do you think that a majority-minority workforce in 2030 is going to want to pay SS taxes to support a recipient class that reflects the demographics of 1963? My guess is no, and I’m planning on that basis.

I don’t think it was the Boomers who opened the floodgates on immigration in 1965. They had a chance in the 80s to pass the Simpson-Mazzoli bill and failed. Too busy agreeing with the Greenspan plan to raise SS rates to 7.65% to effect yet another payoff to the “Greatest” generation.

There was no need for this strife. It will make life interesting, at least.

“What’s happening with all these FBI and DOJ associated lawyers is an obvious circling of the wagons. They’ve generated too much animus in the process and they’re going to get nailed. These matters are far from over and a major battle is looming in the countdown to the midterm elections.”

Is anyone paying attention to the former CIA and FBI people now running in the midterms?

From career bureaucrat, career operative, career deep-stater, to career politician.

This is the oft discussed deline/collapse in action. In this case I believe Ford. I think she went to the house and was assaulted by two entitled little twits who can’t hold their booze. I also think that even if she had gone to the police the same night, nothing would have happened. The class and connection fix was in…..in from birth. K was destined for this position and every step taken in life propelled him to this result. Unfortunately, he was one of those little bad drunks who should have just had the crapo kicked out of him by Ford’s brother.

I was wrong, I thought he would barely lose the nomination. Does it matter? It’s still just a messy little crackup waiting for the debt implosion.

I grew up in a tough logging town on Vancouver Island. In same town there was a taxi driver called ‘Johnny no-nuts’. He had this bad habit of taking native female fares for a little diversion when they booked a ride home after a night at the bar or party. The story says the brothers of his last diversion used a beer bottle on him. What Ford really needed that night was a brother or some good friends. Like K said, “What comes around goes around”. He is just a tool of his class and of the right. Have a nice life and enjoy your security detail Justice K, forever. Is power worth it?

I wouldn’t trade 5 minutes of his life with mine. K, a Loser nancy boy with mommy still pulling his strings and making him dance for what they call Justice; just another racket for the insiders to rig the game. My God, he had to do Trump to get through. He publicly played an angry trumpet. SAD.

Christine Blasey Ford also shows signs of being an alumnus of the Monarch Program (part of MK Ultra). Multi generational CIA families would hand over their children for this mind control program of torture, drugs, hypnosis, sleep-deprivation, and intense psychological manipulation. Multiple personalities were created in the subjects to handle compartmented info and tasks.

Paulo;
Your prejudice oozes out of your post. His class and connections propelled him to The Supreme Court? You grew up in a tough logging town on Vancouver Island so you know all about people like Bret Kavanaugh, right? You know all about what may have happened to Dr. Ford, including the number of people who supposedly assaulted her, but she herself isn’t even consistently clear on the details. I don’t know how they do it in Canada, but here in America you’d better prove your charges before you attempt to destroy someone’s life.

Aside from the known work history of the various lawyers, and the fact that Ford was in Rehoboth Beach, the only other FACT is as our host has written: “Ms. Leland Keyser… told the final round of FBI investigators… — as reported by the The Wall Street Journal — that she “felt pressured” by Monica McLean and her representatives to change her story — that she knew nothing about the alleged sexual assault, or the alleged party where it allegedly happened, or that she ever knew Mr. Kavanaugh.” One wonders what motive Keyser would have to lie at that stage of the inquiry.

Let’s assume the WSJ was reporting fact. All else boils down to “I Believe her” or “I believe him.” Sorry, that is not at present enough to convict even those born into privilege.

Regarding Rule of Law, that went out the window some time ago and manifested its absence most pointedly in Hilary Clinton’s email server. So based on HRC’s apparent status above the law we can appreciate your cynicism.

The question isn’t whether or not they believe her. The question is whether or not they’d believe her if Kav was their son. No one can honestly say that they would accept this kind of fact-free allegation directed at one of their own.

This whole disgraceful circus with a girl who went to a private school to drink and what not, and as a result became a psychology professor with a specialization in self-hypnosis and tricks with a lie detector, showed that the femiNazi are on the guard.

Rapists no pasaran!

And at the same time, in a recent report of the Inspector General, even in the redacted edition, it was clearly written about the verification of Anthony Weiner’s devices – crimes against children. And something none of these noble defenders from the violence did not respond to.

But now, when we wait for the publication of redacted pages and other documents on the case of investigating the events of two years ago, questions to Comey and McCabe, why were they sitting on these devices that were taken from the hands of the New York police, when it was engaged in Wiener sexting to underaged and found there not only his affairs, but also the so-called insurance files with compromising materials on Hil & Bil and possibly other visitors of the pedo-island.

Also through the investigation of the Clinton Foundation, and especially what actually passed for the help to the long-suffering Haiti.

Now, if you throw it all into the light of day, for without transparency there will be no healing of society, what will these defenders do?

Will they write nasty things on the Clinton’s garage doors as they wrote to Kavanaugh’s? Will they call with threats to the rapists, as they called the senators who voted for Kavanaugh? Will they crowded into the offices of senatorial criminals, who prefer younger and under drugs, so that they do not resist? Will they require investigations against movie stars who have sacrifices for fun?

That would be the thing to do: throw it all out about these creatures that moralize us and look at the reaction of the defenders of morality.

Events develop in such a way that arrests are more likely to begin before the elections than after them.

And at the same time, in a recent report of the Inspector General, even in the redacted edition, it was clearly written about the verification of Anthony Weiner’s devices – crimes against children. And something none of these noble defenders from the violence did not respond to.

But now, when we wait for the publication of redacted pages and other documents on the case of investigating the events of two years ago, questions to Comey and McCabe, why were they sitting on these devices that were taken from the hands of the New York police, when it was engaged in Wiener sexting to underaged and found there not only his affairs, but also the so-called insurance files with compromising materials on Hil & Bil and possibly other visitors of the pedo-island.

Thanks. One irony in there is that they were so out to get Trump that they did not investigate the Weiner emails until late October, instead of late September, when they could have. That probably had a more damaging effect on Hillary’s campaign than if they hadn’t put so many resources into investigating Trump and Russia.

Long gone, even on college campuses, is history as a scholarly inquiry into the beliefs and thinking of people of ages past as can be understood on basis of whatever intellectual capital was available at the time. Instead, sieved from the broader context of history we have nothing but isolated “facts” such as “the founders owned slaves”, serving to anoint those living today — but blithely otherwise ignorant — with a sense of higher nobility over peoples of the past.

How much freedom does someone have?
Does free will exist?
Oh, these heavy thoughts.

>
NEW BOOK: PERSONALITY IS PRIMARILY GENETIC
One of the primary dividing lines between the impossibly reductive political dichotomy of “left/right” is that the left believes in nurture and the right believes in nature. In other words, the left believes you are made that way through experience and environment, while the right believes you are born that way.

Most people—even leftists—seem to believe in physical differences between groups of different continental origins. All the data regarding intelligence also suggests there are demonstrable disparities in cognitive aptitude. But in in his new book, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, geneticist Robert Plomin argues that genes are also the primary determinant of an individual’s personality.

According to Plomin:

We now know that DNA differences are the major systematic source of psychological differences between us. Environmental effects are important but what we have learned in recent years is that they are mostly random – unsystematic and unstable – which means that we cannot do much about them.

If this news makes you angry or upset, that’s clearly your genes talking. You cannot do much about it.

And,……such attendant/related research makes unavoidable the conclusion that within any demographic there is, in predictable ratio, a spread of predispositions similar to that of a termite colony. Our lesson is to understand that not all “colonies” survive against any given set of challenging circumstance, but some will due to how this spread of predispositions flexes — often more due to serendipity
rather than objective reasoning as only humans are capable. As illustrated by history, much coincidence was involved in the evolution of Western culture, playing into its advancement over all others.

All this means is that people are going to misconstrue the implications of nature’s influence on personality… just like they misconstrued the influence of nurture. And use this misunderstanding to advocate for public policy.

With all due respect to “Takimag”, it ain’t “Nature”, or “Science”, and it’s audience ain’t scientists.

When laypeople start talking about science its always a shit-show, a frenzy of confirmation bias (or it’s opposite) and used to support any conclusion the author wants to support.

“Environmental effects are important but what we have learned in recent years is that they are mostly random – unsystematic and unstable – which means that we cannot do much about them.” is a statement that is complete horseshit. A predictable inference from a pseudo-intellectual blog seiving everything through some ideological filter.

And the book itself? I’ll read it before commenting further…. as it’s not even released yet. The MIT Press (November 13, 2018).

But I will say this… there is no fucking chance in hell it represents some paradigm shift. Nothing is going to change for the salient implications of genetics- the common sense notions we’ve always had, like, poison is bad for genes (nature) and beating your kids (nurture) damage potential.

If we look for answers to the contemporary realities of diminished potentials, the overwhelming dominance of the twin factors of abuse and pollution remain the basis of our problems. Environmental and social factors are discrete and proximal and eminently tractable- yet “we cannot do much about them”… pseuso intellectual doesn’t begin to describe this sophistry.

This is just undiluted evil, so how did we get here? What came first? Denial of facts? Abdication of responsibility? Incoherent social ethics? The illogic of rhetoric? The stupidity of religious rationalization? Intellectual laziness? Spiritual emptiness? Moral confusion?

“Environmental effects are important but what we have learned in recent years is that they are mostly random – unsystematic and unstable – which means that we cannot do much about them.”

An accidental experiment was conducted whereby an identical twin was sent into space for an extended time while his twin brother remained on earth. The twin who went into space received cosmic radiation in addition to the other physiological damage that spaceflight induces. It was discovered that his DNA had been altered to the point where it no longer matched his twin brother on earth. Severe emotional trauma can also leave enduring “scars.”

On the other hand, going to a somewhat better equipped high school with a more “enriched learning environment” won’t have much impact.

“”. Environmental and social factors are discrete and proximal and eminently tractable- yet “we cannot do much about them”… pseuso intellectual doesn’t begin to describe this sophistry.”

SnakPak,
Sophistry…who are we attempting to deceive? If one’s views on environment or society as held by the readership, or myself, is wrong, it would be, mostly, a result of ignorance, not sophistry, for if sophistry were in evidence, it would show a knowing or belief in what was otherwise argued.

“we cannot do much about them”

You and I can do absolutely NOTHING about the ills of the environment and society.

If you think you can change the onset of environmental disaster that we suspect is rapidly approaching, you are, permit me, naïve

If you think you can materially impact the societal ills that have befallen us, you are, again, naïve. I’m sorry.

The Montreal accord is generally cited in terms of the success in reversing the accumulation an atmospheric pollutant, in that case, Chlorofluorocarbons.

Sure, it was recently discovered that in the chemical synthesis warrens of some industrial park, they were cooking it up and putting it inside refrigerator insulation as a foaming agent. But the effects of the accord definitely shrank the ozone hole and spurred positive changes around the world. Ahh, that not-so-hazy memory of a world where multilateralism and a respect for science prevailed more often.

Over time, there have been other examples of environmental and social problems, which were addressed. Attitudes changed, about many things. For example, now most people recycle where I live. Sure, they are too stupid to take caps off bottles so this waste stream has to be re-sorted later. But its a start.

Getting Lead out of gasoline was a no-brainer. Prayer didn’t do it- for 50 years. I just read they are phasing out the lead weights used for wheel balancing (that fall off all over the place). Progress is slow because we’re spending all our time (and money) on shitty governance squabbles.

And sure, there are more examples of problems than solutions but it doesn’t obviate the fact that, primarily in terms of the light of scientific research, real problems are solved. Discrete, identifiable problems. Real, proximate causes with observable cause and effect.

Anyone who believes that problems don’t get solved because of some fatalism that chaos is always and forever thwarting human will could be forgiven for thinking no such thing exists, for as much automatic and thoughtless behavior is observable every day.

We might be running short of brains and courage- but that doesn’t change the fact that these things do exist and examples can be found of their gainful employ.

SnakPak
I will give you your examples. Perhaps my view on AGW is skewed by the ridiculous Paris Accords…accords that were not even half measures, and the politically correct demand for acceptance, blind, rote acceptance,without question that it subsequently entailed.

If an asteroid were about to hit the earth, how many nations/peoples would opted out of an immediate solution? What agreement to save humanity would permit such largess?

There seems to be too much political capital, rather than existential angst, driving the issue of AGW. I do not deny AGW, any more than I deny the existence of God…I just don’t know, and an uninformed opinion otherwise is hardly worth discussion.

If the PTB want my acquiescence, they will have to lead by example…you know, just as in WWII when the Rich, the Senators, the President sent their kids into harm’s way.

@malthuss:
So, long story short, does this mean that psychopathy, even though it isn’t an official disorder, is hereditary?
What about being homosexual ?
What about being an alcoholic ?
What about just being an out & out asshole ?

My liberal friends’ heads explode when I assert that the worst thing that could happen next month is for a “Blue Wave” to convince the DNC that it has been right all along and should just stay in bed with Corporate America.

I hate Trump and the Republican Party – two very different entities – as much as they do, but I keep insisting that if Liberals want to defeat the Conservatives they need to be better than they are.

Surely recommitting to defend the working class constituency that it has betrayed for over a generation now would be easier than all of these machinations, but the Democratic Party will have none of it. Consorting with those grubby lower-class folks might keep them out of the right country clubs.

They’re ALL dirty Zoltar, and I doubt that there’s any coming back. The Democrats have also hung onto the super delegates meaning that all Democrats are equal, but some are more equal, to paraphrase Animal Farm.

Having studied the Pedo scandal, it goes way deeper than
Oh, the ones that heave been convicted.
Way deeper.
All the kiddy porns on FBI agents computers.
Larry Birkin.
NAMBLA.
Ginsbergs —..allen and SCOTUS.

Senior Adviser to the UN’s World Health Organization, celebrated for over 20 years as a champion of charitable causes
for at-risk children, the recipient of numerous awards in recognition of his humanitarianism, including the Canadian equivalent of a knighthood was arrested two weeks ago in
Kathmandu, Nepal by local police on allegations of child sexual abuse.
Preliminary investigations suggest that Dalglish might have sexually abused many children and he’s been in custody ever since.

Earth to James, Kavanagh was confirmed to the court on Saturday by a vote along party lines, 50-48. The vote occurred shortly before 4 p.m. on Saturday.

Time to get upset about something else now. But if you don’t want to believe Kavanagh was confirmed because you don’t want to, go right ahead. Myself, I’m going to get back to worrying about things that matter.

He said she said, as a fabulist you should know better than to believe one way or another. Your skills should be giving you the ability to suspend belief in the absence of facts, especially he said she said facts, altogether and see a bigger picture.

The analogy of a surveillance drone may prove useful to you. Imagine you are watching the video from a flying camera from far above in the sky. Moving dots are below and one of those moving dots is you. What is your dot doing and why? What is he choosing to believe and why?

Well there is one thing that will come of it K-Dog and that is that every one of these assholes that will not give up on this or any of the other scams that they choose to run are all being paid huge salaries and incurring huge expenses in perusing these personal power agendas. This all has to be paid for you know and as long as they are screwing around with their personal crap instead of doing real work to serve the rest of us, the nation will continue to get broker, and broker, and broker. And when they are finally done screwing around and choose to retire, we will all get to pay their pensions and Cadillac plan healthcare bills too. Tax the crap out of the working people or just print and spend, it does not matter for both will destroy the financial system of the US of A eventually. Then it will get interesting and quickly at that.

These days you knee-jerk conservatives have a whole lot in common with knee-jerk liberals: you cling to the delusion that your side is ok. There is no conceivable path to restoring American politics to any sort of functionality until former partisans call bullshit on both.
“My side” is deeply corrupt and doesn’t give a shit about fairness, justice or the welfare of this country and its citizens. Until you are willing to acknowledge that the same is true for “your side,” you are just an obdurate part of an intractable problem.

But Jim, this was a job interview not the court of law! Anyone else sick of hearing that lame argument? Since when is a confirmation hearing to the SCOTUS merely a job interview? It’s called a confirmation HEARING, and not a job interview for a reason.

And why do people believe that due process only applies to criminal court cases and not all aspects of life? Last time I checked, someone accusing someone else of rape under any venue or circumstance has a very good chance of ruining the accused’s life and especially in a very public arena like a confirmation hearing.

Forget the fact that Ford wanted an FBI investigation while Kavanaugh emphatically did not. Forget that Ford’s husband was told of this assault in 2002 which he would have told FBI agents under oath but was denied the chance. Forget that the incident came up in couple’s therapy in 2012 and 2013, well before creepy Kavanaugh was on any short list for Supreme Court nomination.

Ford wanted Mark Judge put under oath as did the entire Democratic party. Let the miserable SOB lie to the Feds and see how that goes. According to Kunstler, Ford mad up an elaborate story of the assault, describing the inside of the house with the narrow staircase leading to a 2nd floor and a bedroom with a bathroom directly across from it, the room to which she ran to escape the assault.

This description just happens to match the layout of the home Kavanaugh’s friend little Timmy lived at the time. The same home Kavanaugh’s calendar said he and the cast of characters Ford mentioned present at the party of her assault were meeting for brewskies. No investigation needed here, just move along please.

None of this of course had anything to do with Graham and McConnell being determined to seat another conservative judge before the midterm elections. Let’s get this lying sack of crap on the bench so we can control jurisprudence fro decades.

One with intellect above JHK would have to ask who had the most to lose and most reason to lie in this debacle? Would it likely be a woman whose life has been turned upside down by coming forward with the allegation? Or the man watching his life long dream of being a Supreme Court Justice, with life time appointment and 200k salary, slip through his fingers. The same fingers he cupped over Christine Blasey Ford’s mouth during his assault.

I stand by today’s blog, about which you fail to address the salient point: that Christine Blasey Ford was coached and assisted by former officials at the DOJ and FBI. This plain fact ought to disturb anyone interested in the truth of the matter. — JHK

Stand where you like, Jim. But for my part, I think you’re getting out over your skis, and that’s me being kind. Christopher Hitchens once observed that what can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, and the evidence in your favour is exactly equal to the evidence she gave against Kavanaugh, i.e. zilch.

To use your framing, Dr. Ford plays the ‘injured little girl’ card, and your countermove is to make a bunch of insinuations about the coziness of America’s ruling class. I don’t have my copy of Hoyle handy, but that doesn’t feel like a winner to me. Why should anyone prefer your steaming pile of no evidence to someone else’s? Is it the smell?

She comes from a family of Spooks and she recruits for the Spooks. Those are facts, Jack, or should I say Jacque? Let’s face it: the Left is in with the Deep State just like the conventional Right – and you don’t like that people are realizing it.

>>> and the evidence in your favour is exactly equal to the evidence she gave against Kavanaugh, i.e. zilch.

Not quite, Elrond. Had Ford simply accused Kav then you’d be right. But she also named eyewitnesses including her best friend. None of them back up her claim. Then she claimed she alluded to Kav years ago at a therapy session. But she refuses to release the therapy notes for independent review. She claims she took a polygraph (such as it was, with only two general questions and no control questions). But she refuses to release the polygraph details. Then she lied about flying and claustrophobia. And her story has subtly changed. All of this puts her credibility in deep negative territory.

Really prescient coaching by the FBI and DOJ that began in 2002, when apparently in your mind, she was coached to tell her husband she had been assaulted by Kavanaugh. It appears you coalesce with this white man of dubious character that feels entitled to become the next Supreme Court judge.

Kavanaugh is supremely unqualified for the job to which he has applied due to his supreme lack of character and proper temperament for the job. Sadly in addition, we now have a Republican party operative, something unabashedly revealed during his testimony, seated to our highest court. By what perverse rationale do you find that a good thing?

My what a melodramatic way you have of ending you blog, gonetohell! You should have mentioned that “cold, fish eyed look of the demented serial rapist” he displayed. Because you, of course, were there to see it all.

True, Ms Ford did not act for great personal gain. She was there as the tool of the CIA she has served all her life, as her father and grandfather before her. Wake up, and smell the coffee!

And we should all unquestionably accept Kavanaugh’s new defintions for boofing, Devil’s Triangle and ralphing, no matter what every other teenager at the time knew those terms to mean. The man is a liar who has been demonstrably proven to do so, under oath, in 2004 and 2006. He lied that he had not received info stolen from the computers of Democrats during his tenure in Bush’s White House. Don’t know what you and JHK have been smelling, but it sure isn’t coffee. Maybe it’s that enigmatic covfefe?

Since it’s quite obvious you’re light on morality, I guess, for you, this disgraceful appointment will have to be about politics. Only a reprobate would see a proven liar as fit for Supreme Court Justice.

Gonetohell, do you own a full length pink vagina outfit? You sound like a tearful, bitter loser who hasn’t felt right in the last 23 months. And it just keeps getting worse.

Trump keeps getting stronger. He’s turning the tables on the deep state degenerates. The deep state – a cesspool of moral evil you can’t see. Clearly, your marxist, self-righteous delusions are all you have left.

It is common when people lie to throw in all kinds of trivial detail to make it sound convincing. The problem is that nobody (nobody with any sense) is taken in by it. The anonymous accuser of the late Bishop George Bell, who was famous for his strong criticism in the House of Lords of the bombing of German cities in the Second World War (which is said to have cost him appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury), recounted an unusual staircase and other details that one would not have been expected to know. The problem is that it was all wrong. She was talking about events that happened (or rather didn’t) more than fifty years ago. And we are supposed to believe this: “He said it was our little secret because God loved me.” She was supported by a therapist.

And can you seriously imagine Bishop George Bell sitting there in his study with this little girl on his knee saying, “This will be our little secret because God loves you”? You know, back in the 40s and 50s. Anglican bishops did not talk like that.

The only question is where did the batty old dear pick up the cliche? Was it from the rubbish on the telly and at the cinema? Or is it something that has established itself in the collective unconscious? I think it might be the latter. A third option is from her therapist, but then where did ‘she’ get it?

” Let’s get this lying sack of crap on the bench so we can control jurisprudence fro decades.”

GTH,
Maybe, but he is OUR sack of crap….

He is as good as any, insofar as any metric you can describe.

No one can withstand the scrutiny of serial investigations conducted by agencies with unlimited resources…even you, yourself, could be exposed as a serial masturbator…your fantasies laid bare for your detractors to deride with shameless satisfaction.

Humans are imperfect. The few of us who are true Saints understand that.

My imperfections do not extend to sexual assault and lying under oath. But then again I’m not looking for a seat on the highest court in the land, so I suppose we need to cut him some slack. Even if it were only possible hid did these things he should not have been considered. I think we can at least go one better than that.

“Even if it were only possible he did these things he should not have been considered” – from the wisdom of gonetohell

For someone who claims devotion to logic and decency, that’s quite a statement. Any baseless, unproven charges constitute “the possible”. You actually believe someone should be denied appointment based on “the possible” not “the proven” not even on “the likely”. Just the faintest rumor in the air is enough for you.

Are you a woman, gonetohell, or a man on estrogen therapy? I suspect a hormonal impairment to coherent thinking. But at least your deepest, clouded thoughts do give me a good laugh.

You’re right, it was ridiculous for me to say that even if it were possible he sexually assaulted Dr Ford he should not be confirmed. But on the upside, that was enough for a clear thinker like you to latch onto to obscure all the legitimate reasons he should not be confirmed.

Primary to those reasons is that he’s on obvious lying snake that has no trouble lying under oath. He lied at his 2004 and 2006 hearings under oath to deny he had accessed stolen documents from Democratic senators computers. He lied in his latest testimony about terminology he used that clearly referred to sexual behavior, not drinking games or flatulence.

And the girl they formed a club around was to them a tramp, not a friend. It was nauseating to watch him feign indignation while audaciously blaming Democrats for dragging her good name through the mud, not him with his yearbook entry. Sad sacks like yourself and Kunstler swallowed it all, hook, line and sinker.

I wish someone would speak up for women in all this chicanery, a sane voice that states the obvious, YOU ARE BEING USED! If you have been sexually violated, you need to report it, immediately. Evidence of what happened needs to be gathered if you want the culprit apprehended. Otherwise, as is now happening in Hollywood most of the rape cases in the #metoo wave are being dropped by the lapd for lack of evidence or have gone beyond the statute of limitations.
As well as the innocent men being ruined are the true rape cases that will not be credited because of these false accusations

It is all too common for women to lie about rape and sexual assault. I didn’t realize that MeToo cases were being dropped for lack of evidence although I expected this to happen. It is difficult to collect evidence for crimes that never happened. The danger is that juries are swayed by the number of allegations rather than the evidence for them. There used to be restrictions on the admissibility in court of similar fact evidence.

” 29 In such cases the effective destruction of the presumption of innocence has been brought about by the courts themselves and in particular by the decisions made by the House of Lords in P and H. Because these decisions have permitted, and indeed encouraged, the admission of evidence which is both highly unreliable and massively prejudicial, innocent defendants have again and again found themselves facing large numbers of allegations, all of which are false. Again and again, as could readily have been predicted (and as was foreseen in the original exclusionary similar fact principle), juries have convicted on the basis of such evidence.

” 30 The result over the past eleven years has been a systematic and continuing perversion of justice on a scale which would once have been unimaginable. Unlike previous systematic injustices in the twentieth-century, the original authors of these injustices are the courts themselves.”

I had an argument with my brother-in-law last week about the Kavanagh case. Surely there had to be something to it, he said, or why all the fuss? There was nothing to it. Well, are you saying I don’t have a right to an opinion too? All right, have you looked into it? No. Well, there you are then.

“While telling your parents and the cops is necessary, and ought to be sufficient, [but] it just isn’t. I posted this article the other day and I urge everyone to read it:

washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/opinions/arlington-texas/

“Long story short, this high school student told her parents the same night and the cops the next day. She gave a full account and allowed samples to be taken, which matched at least one of the classmates she named. There was no prosecution, *and* she was targeted by a hate campaign that forced her to change schools.” (Emphasis and added for volodya’s benefit.)

And in one famous case a girl was late getting home. So she claimed the taxi driver raped her. Bizarre? Yes. And the casual destruction of a man’s life is just mind blowing. She didn’t know him or plan it. Just off the cuff. Teenagers can be terrifying, be it boys doing an initiation ritual by stomping a stranger or girls doing the Salem Witch Trial type thing.

But girls are often good liars, with quick wits to confabulate. Obviously their story will fall apart – but only if people care to really prosecute. That didn’t happen when the whole room was pandering to Dr Ford btw. The girl finally admitted the truth, but only after the man had been utterly savaged.

So your point is what? That this girl of which you speak should have said nothing but should have waited for 37 years later to see if her assaulter came up for a high paying job and then smear him then with no reports or backup? Is the he said-she said offense THAT superior? What am I missing here?

Walter B, I said that reporting sexual assault to the cops is necessary. That’s right there in my own words. So the answer to your rhetorical question is no — the girl of whom I speak, Amber, did exactly the right thing and reported. The police investigation in that case led to no prosecutions of the two boys she said were involved. But unlike Dr. Ford’s allegations, Amber’s were both reported and investigated at the time. Therefore it’s not a he-said, she-said: there was physical evidence, which you can evaluate for yourself if you read the article.

What I want to make part of the conversation is the other thing that happened to Amber: she got crucified by her peers, who subjected her to a hate campaign that drove her to give up her social circle and change schools. What motivates a schoolful of kids to take sides against one of their own? Apparently, it was because she made accusations against… one of their own. (Two, actually.) Why take sides? And if you’re gonna take sides, why side against her and not the boys? Is that just an accident, a flip of the coin, or is there something else to it?* Where does this witch-hunting phenomenon come from? All this is the ‘not sufficient’ part.

Walter, I won’t hide my personal sense that when it comes to sexual assault, there’s a pattern of denial, of shifting responsibility, and sometimes of outright victim-blaming. The net effect of this is to discourage and often outright punish women for making allegations of sexual assault. The usual retort is that ‘false allegations destroy men’s lives!’ and to that my response is, so do false allegations of child molestation, but in those cases it’s usually the falsely-accused man who has to defend himself, not the false accuser. Being a woman, in short, makes you doubly a target: first for assault, and then for being silenced about it.

#MeToo is not an accident. It’s happening because women are openly rebelling against this pattern that punishes them if they take their own side. Some of them, at least, are not lying.

*If anyone wants to insert that the students must have known something about Amber that we don’t, I would ask you to kindly buttress that with information, from the article or from somewhere else.

Sorry Elrond, I was a bit off my game there because you are correct not only about what you said, but about the fact that the standard defense for the abusers is to turn the tables around and make the women the bad guys, ala Hillary Clinton protecting Bill. My point about the he said-she said was strictly meant in regards to the Kavanagh case.

Sounds like you may be one of those chivalrous types who stands up for the lady’s honor and all and if you are, then we are at least bookends in that regard. I have seen and heard so much crappy behavior and tales from guys in my days that I find anything at all believable when it comes to men and their abilities to debase the gender and even humanity itself.

It would appear that this is another one of those issues that can never be corrected and can easily be used against us all by those seeking to bring us all down. There are no solutions, only problems.

“”Women are seldom punished for false accusations. That has to change. ”

I gave you a number of links the last time you brought this up, showing women who were jailed for false rape accusations.

Now, if you were ‘God’ you’d be able to see all the false rape accusations where women didn’t go to jail, and put them on one side of your divine scale. Then you could take all the actual rapes where men didn’t go to jail – or even get as far as court – and put them on the other scale. And you could see how it played out. I know where I’d put my money and I’m not even ‘God’.

And you’d need to include those rape cases where there WAS an actual rape (you’d know, being ‘God’) but there wasn’t enough proof to put the man in jail. You can’t put a woman in jail for that, just because he gets away with it. You need the same degree of proof that she accused him falsely as she needed, but didn’t get, to put him in jail.

Wyatt was disoriented and confused, Aven recalled in his statement. She even misidentified one of the two boys she said assaulted her — the football player — instead naming a third boy who had been at the party as one of the perpetrators. But according to Marks, the football player had come back with the soccer player and Wyatt, and then left in his own truck. And those were the two boys Wyatt would tell the police had raped her: the ones who had been with her in the truck.

Thank you, Elrond, for pointing out how often innocent people are misidentified in rape cases—even mere hours after the event.

Thank you for pointing out why we have an adversarial system of justice that includes a presumption of innocence and rules of evidence and so on.

Excellent article. I never believed a word of it, right from the start. And I never believed a word of the MeToo nonsense either, right from the start. And I said so here. There is a surprising number of other fantasies I don’t believe either, but I won’t go into it now.

Sharyl Attkisson covers a lot of the background in her book Smear, which takes us up to the election and a bit beyond. Her earlier Stonewalled covers the period before that. She is at pains to be even-handed between Dem and Rep, or Left and Right, but it is clear that the Left are the worst, by a country mile. Some of the names we hear now pop up in these books but you would need a good memory, or already be familiar with the subject, to take them all in. The reason I bought Smear was to learn more about the smear that Trump was fake news. This came from the owner of Google’s parent company. Trump took the term and turned back on them. It is sign of how deluded the media are that they imagine it is themselves who are reporting the truth.

But it is not just manipulation from the top. What we also have is a bottom-up thing with many people (especially women) wanting to believe the ‘victim’ and with a blind belief in disgusting progressive causes like abortion.

It is also important to realize that even for the Deep State it is not just about power and money (‘follow the money’). They believe in the fantasy too, only it happens to coincide with their own professional and financial advancement. A parallel is Al Gore and global warming. And they can feel virtuous. They are fighting for civilization against the forces of darkness.

Already there are comments here which betray a disappointment that the rich spoilt brat wasn’t destroyed, or which side track (‘He doesn’t have the character’). Why isn’t the deceit obvious to them? Why aren’t they outraged but instead cling to the illusion? That’s the power of the fantasy. Those who point to the Powerful, the One Percent, the Billionaires and Wall Street and the Upper Class are missing the point.

Another Deep State believer eh? Also a God believer? A disbeliever in carbon dioxide pollution? Abortion is “disgusting”? Women aren’t sexually assaulted?

I guess I definitely disagree with you on everything but I am worried that, in an environment of constant media confusion, smear campaigns, and political chicanery, and intellectual siloing we become ever more divided.

Deep State believer? No, I was definitely not one of those and I often questioned its existence on this blog, and I got the impression I was on my own in this. However, having read Attkisson’s two carefully written books I can now appreciate the scale of the deceit and its organized nature, overwhelmingly by progressives, who congregate around the Democrat Party. A few of the same names keep popping up. I am not sure if this is the Deep State but it seems a close enough fit to be getting along with for the present.

However, the existence of conspiracies does not change my mind about the nature of what we have, which is a mass fantasy and essentially irrational. That includes AGW. As I have repeatedly told Janos in response to his sweeping accusations of clerical ‘paedophilia’, all you have to do is look at it. The IPCC is deeply dishonest and lacking in credibility, as one would expect from a UN body. I have given specific examples here in the past. The problem is deciding which examples to choose as there are so many of them.

I’ll ignore religion and abortion for now.

‘Women aren’t sexually assaulted?”

I am sure it happens but false accusations are very common. In a witch hunt like MeeTo it is safe to disbelieve all accusations. There is a small chance that the odd one may have some truth but evidence must be provided.

I won’t continue. You need to look into this stuff because at the moment it is like trying to teach French to a chimp (no offence intended of course, either to you or the chimp). Start with Richard Webster’s Sceptical Essays website.

Right on, Jim! Let’s call a spade a spade! I too was initially willing to believe that Blasey Ford had some sort of a forgotten fart lodged “indelibly in her hippocampus”, but when it became known that she wrote the Senate letter from her Monica McLean’s house in Maryland, it became clear as day that she cooked it up from scratch. Dr. Blasey Ford is a creep and a liar.
An interesting take take on the Palo Alto U. hatchery of SJ troopers and fake trauma memories here: youtube.com/watch?v=cFL6k5yOAFM

Right on, Jim! Let’s call a spade a spade! I too was initially willing to believe that Blasey Ford had some sort of a forgotten fart lodged “indelibly in her hippocampus”, but when it became known that she wrote the Senate letter from her Monica McLean’s house in Delaware, it became clear as day that she cooked it up from scratch. Dr. Blasey Ford is a creep and a liar.
An interesting take take on the Palo Alto U. hatchery of SJ troopers and fake trauma memories here: youtube.com/watch?v=cFL6k5yOAFM

Jim;
Could you cite the source for news about Monica McLean and Rehobeth Beach, Delaware? I googled those terms, and read some stories on a few websites I never heard of. I followed the Kavanaugh saga very closely and heard in passing only one reference to the story on the radio.

Here’s the hidden agenda I see. Thanks to Trump, In the near future many deep state persons will be charged by federal prosecutors with sex crimes (often but not always involving pedophilia).

Before that day arrives they want to muddy the waters with as many false accusations as possible. When every man stands accused of sex crimes, the whole topic becomes a farcical opera. Hence the Soros “foot soldiers” parading with their pink vagina hats, their primal screams, their deep man-hatred on full display.

But the white hat NSA knows all; the evidence is compiled and irrefutable; the rats have no where to hide.

There’s the real story then there’s the story you and many others here, including your fearless leader JHK, believe. A story meticulously created courtesy of a sh#t load of Republican dark money. Throw decency and logic out the door as neither are necessary in this new Trump era.

It is obvious that the Deep State manufactured this Ford nonsense. Evil machinations. They permeate throughout our government and institutions as the quest for power continues. Our alphabet institutions are all corrupt, our government is corrupt. JHK just got a glimpse behind the curtain; behind the facade known as the USA.

Many moons ago, in L.A., I voluntarily went with a very nice looking young woman ( a real babe) into a Church of Scientology facility. There, I acceded to being “audited”. Have not suffered any lingering effects of the procedure other than remaining very confused about certain aspects of L.Ron Hubbard’s “religion. Most other aspects; it’s as clear as crystal.

“Many moons ago, in L.A., I voluntarily went with a very nice looking young woman ( a real babe) into a Church of Scientology facility”

Pequiste.

Excellent! reminds me of a story told by a current buddy…but an old hippy from the days….

Peoples Park demonstrations in the early 70’s. The park was nothing more than a 1/4 acre of scrub and blowing trash in the middle of a ghetto block where no sane white man would be found. My buddy said he was bussed down from Oregon State University to participate in the “action”. I told him that I had been there too, and asked him why he even bothered…he said it was to get women. Apparently those men “down with the struggle” got laid. We laughed and laughed.

I used to see my namesake’s science fiction on bookstore shelves. Even then I had a healthy skepticism about his cult, which turned out to be very well-founded, but there was still a little voice that said, “Eh, maybe the fiction at least is entertaining.” I never listened to that voice, and boy howdy am I glad.

Years later, John Travolta got “Battlefield Earth” produced as his vanity project. Lord knew I wasn’t gonna pay for that either, but out of morbid curiosity I sneaked into the theater. There wasn’t another soul there, but I stuck it out and watched the Whole. Damn. Thing. Two irreplaceable hours of my life.

L. Ron Hubbard the man had serious mental problems, but he made up his mind that psychiatrists were an evil conspiracy. Not coincidentally, his alien invaders were called “Psychlos”. Nicely disguised there, Ron! I’m glad you’re dead.

PS: I once went to the local library to hunt down a book about Hubbard, but it was missing. I have some suspicions about who wanted to make it disappear.

With all due respect, fuck you, George.
I’ve done the homework on this and I am presenting evidence of misconduct. It is well within my character to call out dangerous nonsense, and that’s what the Christine Blasey Ford affair is. — JHK

So if we are to believe everyone who says anything about what supposedly happened in any instance, and there are conflicting stories of what happened, how are we supposed to determine which party is telling the truth and which party is lying? Utilize pure, raw emotion perhaps? Believe the party whose tale fits into our own personal agenda? Maybe we just should not care and not pay any attention outside of our own, tiny lives? Are there other option?

Yeah. Think about who has the most to lose and who the most to gain by lying. Consider someone who willingly took a polygraph and someone that refused the same. Consider who wanted a thorough FBI investigation into the matter and who wanted to avoid an investigation at all costs. Consider obvious lies in testimony like the meanings of terms and words in common use at the time in question, something that was easily corroborated by classmates/roommates. Consider as well someone that had already lied under oath on at least two occasions several years prior.

It consisted of two questions, neither of which mentioned Kavanaugh. It was administered, and paid for by parties with a strong agenda to shoot down Kavanaugh and humiliate Trump. And it was administered to a psychology professor who knows how to manipulate the procedure.

Have you ever had a polygraph, gonetohell? I have; let’s just say it all comes down to your mental focus and state of mind. As a truth seeking device the polygraph is a joke, voodoo science, inadmissible in court. And Ford’s polygraph was the ultimate in chicanery.

For all of those who hang their hat on the impressive sound of a “polygraph”, (no not a polyglot), let me share with you the feelings of their usefulness in the opinion once held by a former US Attorney General:

From “The Enemy Within”, By Robert Kennedy

Page 290 – “I might add here that though I do not believe lie detector tests are conclusive, I think they can be very helpful. The machines are used widely throughout the United States by the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Secret Service and the police departments of many cities. In my opinion, the tests are far more effective when used on a sensitive person than on someone who has a psychological problem that keeps him from distinguishing easily between right and wrong.”

Walter, the main use of a polygraph is to scare people into telling the truth. It’s like bluffing in poker when you hold only shit in your hand. People who believe in this voodoo science device should google “how to beat a polygraph” .

Also worth noting that Ford’s widely reported therapy notes and polygraph have yet to be released to the public, let alone the Senate judiciary committee.

The therapy notes were her alleged “proof” that she had mentioned Kav years prior to this debacle. Except we don’t have the notes, and by her own admission, she never mentioned Kav by name at that time.

Really enjoy your work, but differ here. I watched her and believe her; too difficult to fake all that – it would show. K looked more like someone lying. Who had more reason to lie? The conspiracy stuff is just too complicated, humans fall over themselves concocting it and something surfaces.

Give us a break. You can’t be serious with this… “I watched her and believe her;” !? There is no evidence. Everything about this fiasco was suspicious from the very start.

“Conspiracy stuff” might be complicated, YET… it has been going on since the dawn of civilization in government, business, families, etc. It is human behaviour my friend: it exists throughout every and all half-way truthful history books.

You don’t have the ability to determine if someone is truthful or lying based on YOUR perceptions, etc. How ridiculous. How old are you, 7?

An immoral person can stare you right in the face and lie in the most convincing manner you could ever know. You are foolish and lack critical thinking.

Honestly amb, there are many people that believe that nobody can fake anything because they cannot fake anything themselves. They probably believe that the only real actors all live in Hollywood, when in fact actors are everywhere. We know that, but many do not. They are easily fooled and their monthly credit card bills are living proof of their inability to distinguish reality from fantasy.

It is difficult for decent people to imagine what some people are capable of doing. As Buddha said, fear and shame are the guardians of the world. Some have no shame but are held back by fear. With her deep state connections, she didn’t have the latter. And upper class feelings of entitlement are famous for dispersing any sense of shame relative to those outside of their class.

So to you the accuser just needs to “look like” she is telling the truth even though there is zero evidence to back her claims and all her supposed witnesses stated that they were either not there or didn’t know what she was talking about. But that’s okay because Brett looks more like a liar therefore he’s guilty right?

Ms. Ford was traumatized for life…bent by five minutes of mindless groping. Who among us would want to repeat similar attempts/rebuffs of our fumbling youth/ignorance? Who among us are life long wrecks, broken on the wheel of adolescent puberty?

We all have regrets. We all would embrace the do-over, if offered, for regretted moments too many to count. However fragile her psyche may be, if the incident was the low point of her life experience, she has been blessed, indeed.

I have no sympathy with the perpetual victim who’s outrage seems no greater than having been “improperly touched”… 50 years of angst, fear-of-flying-architecturally-challenged behavior bespeaks of something much darker…something unsaid.

Kidding aside, I do think there are scores of people who are life long wrecks because of adolescent puberty.

The calibration of harm has to be adjusted for those who attained the age of 17 having suffered brutal regimes of mental and physical abuse and the cosseted and privileged china dolls of the upper class.

I used to look forward to this blog. Now, not so much. Jim has gone from being a Democrat and a liberal to a Trump supporter. I sure didn’t like Hillary as a candidate, but as the Trump administration does one ugly thing after another, I now think she would have been a hell of a lot better than what we have now. By the time Trump is done, we will have fascism, assuming we don’t have WW3 first.

>>> By the time Trump is done, we will have fascism, assuming we don’t have WW3 first.

Except that Trump bashers have been predicting this now for years. Yet the only fascism we see is coming from the Left. This McCarthy-style attack on Kavanaugh is a great example. We have yet to see any of the so-called evidence that Ford and her lawyers cited. We see the violent Left attacking and intimidating politicians and citizens alike. Here’s what Senator Collins has experienced so far.

The Democratic Party is dying. Their move to the Left is a last ditch effort to round up as many outsider constituents as they can. The power structure of the Dems, under the political and fiscal control of a group of globalist elites, will stop at nothing to retain their power base. They have had things their own way for fifty years, yes even with Reagan, and just absolutely feel that they “own” the Federal Government. This group will do anything, steal, lie, buy influence, create discord, invent conspiracies, manipulate anyone, even murder in the name of retaining power. POWER! That is why they have no agenda. They do not care about anything but getting power. They will destroy the Constitution of the USA to get power. And they are really good at it, as the last fifty years shows.

The RINO portion of the GOP is also dying. When the GOP wins in November, the remaining establishment GOP, will either turn Democrat, a fatal mistake, or join up with the growing contingent of the Trump GOP.

The result is actually not good. Trump will destroy the political old guard in America, the Deep State, because he is a populist and has control of the electorate. And he is smarter and has more energy than the Deep State. If things continue, we may have an unopposed political situation in DC. That could be scary. I believe that single party control is one element of Fascism.

We need two parties period to have balance in DC. One sided government will spin us into the Long Emergency at a much higher velocity. Trump is becoming the driver in the GOP. The Dems need to find an agenda that lets them compete. Right now, they are fading away. As long as power is their sole agenda, their days are numbered.

But Trump’s populism is unbalanced because it lacks socialism. The triumph of Capitalism will be a disaster because Capitalism is now International, just like Marxist Communism and Socialism. In contrast, we need to buck the downward trend and embrace National Capitalism and National Socialism.

Noting the lack of simple respect evinced by men on this board, here’s my advice for any of [the surely dwindling number] the women who visit here who’d like to have a sense of equality when dealing with the menfolk:

1. Learn physical self-defense techniques from an expert and practice them regularly so that they become second nature. Make sure that they are deadly as well as designed for fending off an attacker.

2. Find which weapon you are most comfortable with using. (Pistol, knife, baton, etc.) Train with an expert in its use so that applying it with rapid deployment and deadly force becomes second nature.

3. Pass these skills on to your daughter when they reach the age of 7 or whenever they show serious interest. Train them in these skills until they become second nature.

You want to be treated with respect in this country? Don’t expect anything of the sort. As the preponderance of opinion on this board shows, you’d better prepare for violence in the exercise of power from the opposite sex. You want to run with the dogs? Be ready to bite just as hard.

Not a workable solution. The female body influences the nature and behaviour of women. Their bodies, nervous systems, hormones, etc. strongly inhibit them from being violent, forceful, protective, well versed in hand-to-hand combat, etc. They can be successful to a degree in this area.

Females are nurturers, nest builders, creators, stabilizers, etc. and they balance out the nervous systems and testosterone of males.

The real target here is THE MIND (morality, man’s inhumanity to man, etc.). This is the final frontier that needs to be conquered. Man’s failure to understand himself and his circumstances is the source for all of our woes.

amb,
…So sez you. A female friend of mine is a black belt practitioner of the martial arts. When I asked if she’d try some moves on me, I was on the ground in about half a second and very sorry that I had asked.
Your bullshit about women’s abilities is just that. …And your little squeal that tries to explain why they should be “kept in their natural place” is exactly why I posted what I did. A boatload of folks are going to get themselves a world of hurt before that final frontier is crossed. Living in a fantasy land is an option that I wouldn’t recommend.

Yeah, it is a “workable solution” and a learning opportunity for abusive shitheads, deflective blurtings aside.

I know some female martial artists too ozone. Yet, they are indeed a MINORITY amongst females in general. I don’t think that women should be “kept in their natural place”. I’m just expressing a natural fact. Something that current statistics and history would fully back up.

Decades ago I bought my wife a handgun, and safety and firearms training (which we both did together at Front Sight) and also trained her to carry and use pepper-spray. If she is ever accosted, she has the ability to defend herself, yet, will she? I bloody well hope so. (Yet your average woman will cave in quickly when hit with speed, force, violence, impact, pain and injury. Just due to the ways of testosterone, the majority of males have learned since grade school how to take a punch, deal with getting their ass kicked, etc.). Hormones and biology. You can’t change that I’m afraid.

I just expressed the difference between males and females on a biological basis. Common sense, but you obviously don’t have that sense.

Amb, Ya know, I once got jerked into an alley in a very sudden move, and whaddaya know, I forgot all about my nurturing nature. I whirled, screamed and kicked him where it counts, giving me the chance to run like hell.

I have no training either and that tactic is the one I think about when I idly wonder if the footsteps behind me are just normal, benign footsteps. Apart from one time in my younger days they always have been.

Without getting too neurotic I mentally focus on being prepared to go for it (them) if need be, and giving nothing of my preparedness away, less they be ready for it. At my age, it (they) would be pretty much my only potential advantage!

Good advice for the wrong reason – as if Dr Ford was telling the truth.

Women have good coordination and often can become good shots. Female police fear physical contact (because of their weakness) so may be quicker to shoot than male officers. But of course all police are now trained to shoot rather take any risk.

Instructors say they are free from the macho presumption that they already know how to shoot, so they can be taught more easily. This isn’t just a White Male problem: the Afghani Pathans are miserable shots yet are difficult to teach because of their immense egos.

4. If a female gets drunk, or otherwise intoxicated, with a sexually active male, sooner or later she should expect him to wave his dick in her face; she is entitled to say no, and leave. He must leave it at that.

All-in,
Your advice is for men… but you know exactly what I mean and why I mean it. (Anyone that would “wave his dick in her face” wouldn’t tend to stop at that, and you know it. I’m assuming you haven’t engaged in this behavior yourself, of course; therefore, you wouldn’t know. We could explore your “youthful indescretions”, but just for now, let’s not.)

There are wheels within wheels here, folks. According to Judge Napolitano, Kavanaugh is Swamp, being very close to the Bush family. Yet he isn’t Deep Swamp obviously, or the Monsters would have never come after him. Look at the dollar bill: there is a separation between the Cap Stone and the rest of the Pyramid. Kavanaugh is as the top of the truncated Pyramid, but not in the Cap Stone. He worked FOR the Bush’s but he wasn’t one of them.

If they had derailed him, what would they have done to Trump’s next pick, the anti-abortion fanatic Cooney-Barrett? A woman? Very PC: adopted a Black baby while pregnant with twins – as if to try and undo the damage of increasing the White population. One is reminded of Gore planting trees to offset his jet setting. Would they have assassinated her or something? Kavanaugh is very moderate on abortion compared to her and some others.

Seriously, who adopts a baby when pregnant? And with twins!? And how much time does she spend with any of these kids as a high level career woman? She must be utterly nuts. She talked about “heroic babysitters”. Real family values….

There may be some truth in that. However, I was thinking more along the lines that it takes a long time to adopt – could be a couple of years (where I am anyway) with the hoops you have to jump through, and waiting for a suitable baby. There aren’t as many actual babies available for adoption as when illegitimate births were more stigmatised – and some people are willing to wait rather than adopt an older child.

So I imagined more that you could be quite far along the adoption process and then get pregnant. Unless the wheels grind a lot faster in the US, I’m not sure you could arrange an adoption and see it through in less than the term of a pregnancy. But I don’t know…

My maternal grandmother, whom I never met, must have suffered a miscarriage – or miscarriages – and seemed to be finding it difficult to have a baby. She was acting as a wet nurse (this was 1900!), ended up adopting the baby she was nursing and promptly produced seven of her own.

First, the Demo Party is a long way from dead. You do not get rid of evil so easily. In fact, they could take the congress and make the remaining time of Trump worse than hellish. The problem is anyone can vote. There is no need to be a responsible citizen or even a live one.

Second, the economy is on the edge of a real financial abyss. If you do not understand that, go to the back of the class. Anything else that is felt to be an issue really isn’t compared to the debt one.

Third, why is it an 80 something black celebrity is locked up and Bill Clinton remains free despite the distinct possibility that they committed the same crime of rape? And why are so many giants of the media and entertainment industry, liberals, not in court or in prison for what Judge Kavanaugh is alleged to have done when he was 15 years old?

What utterly ridiculous times. Hell, bring on the Civil War. It beats TV for entertainment value.

When I worked in downtown Chicago at Rush, St. Luke’s, Presbyterian Hospital, I commuted to Elgin. To avoid the Eisenhower, I would drive up Lake Street, by the Green Line, all the way to Bartlett. People bought I was insane, today this is the one of the areas that you hear about Chicago. Extremely dangerous. It was not as bad in the nineties.

My point is, to avoid trouble you need to avoid areas that are trouble.

Women are nuts for the situations they put themselves into. Gals think that men are all dirty young men always out for a piece. Ladies, for a percentage of the male gender, you are absolutely right. So why do you put yourself into situations, like going to boys school parties, by yourself. Because you have a right to do anything you want? Boy, is that dumb! If Ford went to any party by herself, her risk of being assaulted skyrocketed. Why the heck did the third accuser, Swetnick, say she went to many parties where gang rapes were occurring. Is she crazy?

The old rules still apply for women. Avoidance of untoward situations is the key. Travel in pairs or groups in high risk areas. Do not ever try to invade male space by yourself, there is always some jerk who will take advantage. There are so many examples of women getting raped in bars, pool halls, fraternities, stag parties, etc. why women would want to get within five miles of a gathering like this is insane. Natalee Holloway headed off with young men she did not even know. Insane!

Ladies, you can complain all you want that you should be able to do anything, or be anywhere you want. I hear you. But it is your integrity or life that is at stake. Please do not do stupid things.

Maybe they want to be raped, Walter. It is the Number one fantasy of women, so I’ve heard. It is the impetus for thousands of forgettable romance novels & millions of recovered memories. It’s the duty of every man to protect his womenfolk & it’s the duty of every woman to flaunt her rapacity.

This: Swetnick, say she went to many parties where gang rapes were occurring. Is she crazy?

Proves to me that she is a liar. Gang rape!? This is truly a woman’s worst nightmare! NO ONE would ever go repeatedly into a situation that slightly reminded them of one in which such a thing happened.

(a) I believe her, because that’s now the thing to do.
(b) I believe him, because he has so many character witnesses.
(c) I believe neither because we can’t believe both.
(d) I believe both, because once we are through (a)-(c), anything goes.

A woman enjoy intercourse with her man – as she fantasizes about being raped by three other men simultaneously.

Bernie Sanders, Vermont Freeman, February 1972

Janos: Rape is woman’s number one fantasy. Does she really want it? By and large, no. But has nature prepared her for it? It would seem It has. Don’t blame me for this. It’s not my fault that many women apparently orgasm during rape. Does that mean they wanted it or want to repeat it? No. Obviously many feel very conflicted and guilty about it if this happens. The answer to this conflict is not popular in this age of “Our Bodies, Ourselves”: You are not your body. It has a conflicted nature as St Paul said. Another and alien law often rules your and our members – and you do as you would not will to do and feel what you would not will to feel.

This is what I have gather from many sources. I have no personal experience in this matter. And I could be wrong about the word “many”. Maybe it’s only some or a few. It certainly is something to study. How can we counsel women who feel guilty if it’s a big, dark taboo? But in any case, it is the leading fantasy. That in itself says much. No one disputes that.

Fantasy is often choreographed and even if it is something you can’t control, the fantasy makes it safe because its all in your head anway.
Unlike the real danger lurking in reality. And even if if your body goes through the motions it doesn’t mean yes – even somtimes when yes is said. Life is complicated!

I am very skeptical that women have orgasms during rape! It is difficult for many women to orgasm in general, and often need the guy to do the right things for them, and that often takes time to learn.

You could reject the theory of world colored projects, but it becomes difficult to deny its predictive power.

In particular, the previous post concluded that the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh was the result of a change in the strategic balance of forces in the world civil war that emerged after Hillary Clinton’s major victory – the Russian IL-20 catastrophe in Syria, which destroyed the strategic anti-Clinton alliance of Putin Russia, Trump America and Israel Netanyahu.

In connection with the strategic defeat of Hillary Clinton, the very reason for the conflict between the military of Russia and Israel disappeared, since Netanyahu can now confidently promise Putin that those responsible for the IL-20 crash will be severely punished, as they are enemies not only of Russia but also of Israel.

And I will add on my own that they (or most likely he) are also the enemy of Netanyahu, since he, as a result of the IL-20 crash, had to go on trial on charges of corruption, and not only himself, but also members of his family.

By the way, the taking of family members as hostages has become the trademark of Hillary Clinton around the world.

And as if in response to my post about the Secrets of the Financial Policy, on October 7, Minister Siluanov said that no measures are planned to ban the dollar in Russia.

According to him, it is not necessary to run to the banks and withdraw the currency.

In general, the rats are running from the Clinton ship. This is already visible to the naked eye and it may well be that all this is the result of not only the exceptional courage of Judge Kavanaugh, but also the meeting of President Trump with Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein in the end of September, at which the latter apparently handed over to Trump not only the entire Clinton network in the White House, but also the entire structure of the Deep State.

The following has absolutely no bearing on hesaidshesaid crapola currently being flogged by the Dead Horse Society of CFN, and so I’ll admit it’s kind of off-topic, but nonetheless, pretty telling of where this “American” society is headed. (I consider that just a small speedbump on the road to the Great Reckoning and the unavoidable lesson that we’re just aching to be taught.)

This is strictly to address those who actually believe that women should aspire to no more than cooking fine meals while suckling their numerous offspring of domineering (but, ahem, “protective”) menfolk (in all respects, “naturally”).

I REITERATE FOR THE HARD-OF-READING HERE:

“God created man, Sam Colt made them equal.”

Noting the lack of simple respect evinced by men on this board, here’s my advice for any [surely dwindling number] of the women who visit here who’d like to have a sense of equality when dealing with the menfolk of the type who are drawn to comment here:

1. Learn physical self-defense techniques from an expert and practice them regularly so that they become second nature. Make sure that they are deadly as well as designed for fending off an attacker.

2. Find which weapon you are most comfortable with using. (Pistol, knife, baton, etc.) Train with an expert in its use so that applying it with rapid deployment and deadly force becomes second nature.

3. Pass these skills on to your daughter when they reach the age of 7 or whenever they show serious interest. Train them in these skills until they become second nature.

You want to be treated with respect in this country? Don’t expect anything of the sort. As the preponderance of opinion on this board shows, you’d better prepare for violence in the exercise of power from the opposite sex. You want to run with the dogs? Be ready to bite just as hard.

Finca,
Interesting you should think me insane. Pot? — Kettle?
Your usual bullshit aside, I’m simply stating what AMERICAN women should expect in AMERICA and what they might do about it. (Where are you………now?) Almost every male on this board has BIG problems with women having power over their own lives, and your denial of this is a blind-spot of gigantic proportions. Return to your “color project” blatherings of tribal motivations; it’s the only entertaining part of your schtick. The assessment of current cultural viciousness should be left to others.
(Kunstler’s last invective toward a reader will suffice for me in this case.)

Again, the flawed argument that people are equal. That is, other than in legal theory and principle as in “under the law”. Which says nothing about what has been biologically demonstrated that the male agenda is different from that of the female.

Managing a working co-existence between the two agenda to the imperative of social survival is like keeping balance on a tight rope. A very nuance performance, whether regards individual couples or consensus standards of public decorum.

Today though, political capital to be gained by demo-gouging the innate tension between the sexes frames male/female interrelations as essentially pathological. If you advocate the gun as weapon of choice for females what weapon do you recommend for men against predatory psychopathic females?

Cavepainter,
For duh big strong menz who need lots of protection from them scary wimmenz?
Common-fucking-sense and respectful behavior… as toward any other human. If you can’t recognize a “predatory psychopathic female”, then I don’t think you’ve had much experience in the real world. (Although I suspect the opposite, and you’re just making trouble for the hell of it.)
BTW, I contend that everyone would be advised to be armed at all times. Makes for courteous encounters in a rapidly devolving country.

You made me chuckle. Who came first, eggs or chickens? Of course, women bore men. However, who started the process. The old Biblical conundrum, Enos went over the hill and got married. To who? Where did that lady come from?

One of my biggest questions is if unguided, chaotic evolution is true, bi sexual reproduction says that a mutation of one partner must cross with an unchanged partner. Just too chaotic. And again, who arrived first, the man or the woman to make the first walking, talking, reasoning tool making human being.

The female is the primary gender. When asexual bacteria divide, they are called mother and daughter cells.

The male is an invention. A complexification.

The basic biological imperative is to reproduce. To produce offspring is by definition female. It predates the invention of the male.

The male therefore exists to service life through the female, whereas the female exists to service life through herself.

For this reason you will note in most/all species that the male is always cognizant of the presence and moods of the female. She is his reason and his purpose.

The male therefore always loves the female.
Modern American women are fools.
They can demand anything they want, men must make them happy, but why did they demand that men emasculate and why do they think that the OBVIOUS differences between men and women should cause a knee-jerk response of anger and insult?

I admit to being astonished at the accomplishments of the human male. It is a bit worrisome when one’s servant is extremely clever. But the way I look at it, yes, they have surpassed all expectations but look how useful they are!

Well, I DO know why they have become offended, but that is a different tale.

ozone,
Your three pieces of advice, while of some value, are just not practical for 90% of women…they seem to have other interests.

Traditionally, husband and male members of her immediate family provide “security”, and in most of the world, still do.

I would invite you to don full KKK regalia and stroll through the Baltimore or Detroit badlands…it certainly is your right…no harm should come to you…you have a perfect right to dress how you wish!

Your common sense will not find you in those venues.

Women should consider the circumstances they are contemplating…their dress, their manners, their safety in general. They have this basic responsibility, and many deny their responsibility as a sop to politically correct drivel…and sometimes to their extreme detriment.

You want to handle snakes? You’re gonna get bit. Walk through Baltimore in regalia? They may never find your body. Go to a Frat party where no means yes, and yes means anal? Nigga Please!

The fourth bit of advice you should offer is for women to be a good steward to their bodies…and listen to their mothers….

What happened? Who was the group of female idiots who told ladies that they did not have to listen to the advice of their mothers, and fathers, about how to pick friends, situations, warning signs, and proper responses to the advances of men.

Whoever it was has condemned women to sexual violence until they take on the mantle of self protection again.

“That few see the myriad logical contradictions in this whole affair denotes the sad state of what passes for logic in 2018 America. If Kavanaugh’s opposition had resorted to logic, there were ample grounds for challenging his confirmation without resorting to the sexual assault Hail Mary.”

If there were solid, logical grounds to oppose this candidate, yet the opposition resorted to the pathetic he said- she said assault instead, perhaps the objective was not to stop the confirmation, but to assure it. This does make sense if he was indeed a supporter of the Patriot Act, that foul, demented document that traded freedom for supposed “safety” for both sides of the sellout aisles are always about more freedom for them and less freedom for us.

Walter,
I check in regularly, and indeed he usually gets to the larger and more salient *motivations* that underlie these strange political theater pieces. …Or posts someone else’s thoughts who do likewise.
(Hadn’t read that one just yet. Thanks.)

Alrighty Keeds,
I’m done wid dis and obviously have nothing to add to the “discussion” that will change nothing, including minds. Sorry for the interruptions. Have fun.
May you live long.

Progressives, democrats, liberals, stupid people have no right to enter an opinion regarding anything to do with Kavanaugh’s activities when he was a teenager UNTIL they demand an FBI investigation into the allegations by five women that they were raped by Bill Clinton. Until that occurs, their rantings are simply noise. Their credibility is zero. I would add Ted Kennedy into that but he thankfully died.

The left made noise about the Duke Lacrosse Team, Tawana Brawley, and Anita Hill to name just three fake rape/sexual harassment/looked at a woman cross-eyed etc.

Did anyone see the article on Drudge where some high school kid was accused by 5 girls of sexual assault? The entire community piled on him and ruined his life. Three of the girls admitted that they made it up. So far, no punishment for them. Kid’s parents are suing in federal court. I wonder if it will go to the SCOTUS for resolution.

Some of rogue’s gallery: Ellison, Lauer, Spacey, Smiley, Rose, Weinstein and many others.

Unfortunately, the left will likely win this. There are not nearly enough “woke” Republicans to battle this and there are too many freaks in the left bank who are willing to go blood and gore.

We are very likely going to see quite a lot of court battles during upcoming midterms elections regarding voter fraud and validity of action of certain election committees, just like the Bush v. Gore in December 2000.

I think men can have great difficulty with women who are really smart. Usually outperforming women on the physical level, men are often confounded and on the defensive when they’re taken to the mat mentally.

Not to say that a bright woman wouldn’t fuck a mental midget, but a guy’s attraction to the proverbial dumb blond is well known.

So why did nature get the bell curves wrong? For all those geniuses at one end of the male bell curve, there are even more dipshits at the other for whom it would be impossible to find a woman they could be BETTER than.

I remember someone like George Bernard Shaw pointing this out, without the bell curve bit, but I’ve never been able to find the quote. Basically he was sympathising with all those intelligent women who would have to settle for a Tim-nice-but-dim or a plain old pea-brain.

And the size of your wallet means diddly to me compared to your character.

I wasn’t that superficial even then, EF, despite my ’tissue-thin bonhomie’ – married at 25 to a French fella earning less than me even in his native country. I’ll admit to poor choice generally in the matter, but I left him because of his behaviour and his lack of interest in his kids, not his pay cheque, and the only person who looked after me and mine for the next decade and a half was me. With no regrets.

You can accuse me of a whole lot of things, EF, and I’m sure you will, but gold-digging ain’t one of them.

I had an interesting conversation once in New York with a switched on bloke from Columbia University. I knew that he was interested in History, so I asked which genre of History he was interested in? When he replied “American History”, I followed up with: “The Civil War?” He responded: “Too depressing.”

When I pressed him re: The Civil War he kept emphasing “Political Expediency.” He said that “people don’t understand that most things are done for reasons of political expediency.”

In my mind, people who do things out of political expediency are small-minded “Twits.”

Out of expediency, they’ll make China the new “Enemy” and unleash Hog Wild Artificial Intelligence to engage in relentless no holds barred cyber warfare that will go Ape Shit out of control, like the movie “Deliverance”.

Well one thing the Kavanaugh Ford circus has accomplished is bury at least here in Canada the real news. But that’s what circuses are about, distraction right? The new NAFTA, the USMCA, (which in itself sounds like some new campus of a California university) requires Canada or Mexico to ask Uncle Donald for permission if either wish to start negotiations of a trade deal with China. Way to go Team Canada. You can put that request in the never file.

Later this month there is a woman’s march that isn’t drawing as much attention, perhaps because Soros’s doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Women march on the Pentagon. Democrat and GOP officials will try their best to keep that one out of the news.

General Ulysses S. Grant’s favorite foods were steak literally burned to a crisp, and a cucumber soaked in vinegar, or beef soaked in vinegar, with black coffee. Vinegar is wine that’s gone sour, right? What does it mean when an alcoholic imbibes vinegar?

“As a sober alcoholic, and a physician I avoid all alcohol, even traces. This is not because I am afraid of a buzz from trace amounts. It is because my body, like those of most alcoholics, does not react typically to alcohol. Often, I can “tell” that there is alcohol in food that purports to not contain any. The “tell” is that I start to feel very good, or feel especially fond of the food, but for a reason other than taste. It is very subtle. But it is real. And on further inquiry with the kitchen, or cook, I discover there was alcohol in the food, but “it had burned off” or was so small an amount it was thought not to matter. The danger is that this momentary reaction is physical and psychological. It is a conditioned response, and a reflex, much like Pavlov’s dog salivating when hearing the bell. It can lead to increased thoughts of alcohol, and craving. This is a chink in my armor against the next drink. And the next drink is just an arm’s length away.”

“In the aftermath of the campaign, Lincoln faced almost unendurable pressure to stanch the bloodshed. He watched in despair as sick and wounded soldiers from Cold Harbor turned Washington into a vast infirmary, overrun with amputees and embalming establishments. Death was omnipresent in the capital. Mourning “our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country,” Horace Greeley told Lincoln he feared “the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood.” 61 One particularly vitriolic critic of Grant resided in the White House. “He is a butcher,” Mary Lincoln said of Grant, “and is not fit to be at the head of an army.”

Grant’s forte was to wear down the other side. That is what separated him from his predecessors. Lee was going to go on and on and on. After Grant outflanked Lee at Petersburg and started driving him west, Lee was trying to escape down the railroad lines deeper into the South. Grant knew that annihilation of the Southern army was the only way to stop the war. He had to kill all of the rebels. It took a life for a life to eliminate the Army of Northern Virginia. And Grant obeyed Lincoln’s orders and beat Lee into the ground. It was butchery but necessary to end the war.

Oh yeah, annihilation of the other side has been the modus operandi of warfare ever since.

I’ve always wondered why amongst all of the savage carnage after Shiloh, Lincoln never tried to negotiate with individual Confederate states and disparate Confederate generals to force a coup and break up the rebellion? My guess is that British intelligence preempted this and negotiation was further frustrated by speculation in the value of the London War Bonds?

If I was Grant, I would have arrested General Meade and then declared Martial Law and then kicked Lincoln out of the White House and then sorted it out with minimal loss of life and thereby driven down the value of the London War Bonds.

They seemed to keep Lincoln in a bottle surrounded by Pinkerton guards. I read somewhere that Lincoln was assassinated less than a week after they pulled Lincoln’s Pinkerton body guards. Lincoln must have gotten too big for his britches? They probably made sure that Lincoln didn’t cut a deal to stop the carnage and end the war early that would affect the price of the London War Bonds?

Thanks for the relationships these aquatic denizens have in the DC swamp there, Jim.
So, if Ford was a simple pawn, being used by higher individuals in attempt to thwart Kavanaugh- the aim was to protect the permanent bureaucracy in DC (?) That’s how I’m seeming to read that situation.
Are there such serious matters of a constitutional crisis matter that will need adjutication by the Supreme Court in the near future? What would those might entail? Hmm.. We shall see

Are residential burglary under Arkansas law and aggravated burglary under Tennessee law the same as or narrower than “general burglary” such that convictions for those crimes can serve as predicate crimes for the purpose of the enhanced sentencing?

How tedious. Perhaps Kavanaugh is the perfect kind of masochist for this exercise

i have never denied that there is a true justice — that you can’t get your bloody hands on.

You have denied such a thing exists repeatedly and consistently and absolutely .

All that was left of that was your whining to me why can’t you be God ? ( Except of course you wouldn’t put it that way. )

” “So far , and I have been here almost a year , I don’t see that you have offered up ANYTHING BUT a guy in a funny costume with a cudgel. ”

Yes, ”

That , ” Yes ” , which I already knew was coming , was why I never really took your “questions ” seriously.

” offer a different system that history has shown effective and we can perhaps agree on an alternative. ”

Your history is as bogus as East Germany’s was.

I think you want me to be a good liitle girl and mouth your narrative.

No.

” Keep your head down…I do. ”

I rather doubt you do. granted , I don’t really know you , but my experience generally of what seems to be your type is that you are constantly angling for sinecures.

And like in Tudor England , that is perhaps more likely to get your head chopped off than if you were of the untouchable class.

Anyway ; Keep my head down ? I would love too !

— Except I can’t even smoke a cigarette but that some genteel bitch comes along dressed in clothes manufactured by Chinese coolies in a genocidal police state , in an SUV , painting her body in poison , eating poison , using birth control that is really poisonous , and her lifestyle to a large degree , no doubt , funded by drug taxes ,

but claims I’M trying to kill her !!

( And that’s why I don’t take at all seriously the tissue-thin bonhomie, or sympathy , of types like GreenAlba , to pick on someone else for a change. )

As I have pointed out before , you have gun control advocates , and …err…… gun control opponents ,

but , apparently , it turns out that I’m the only person in the whole fucking stadium who trusts a waitress with an AK -47.

So it seems that the reality actually is that I’m very easy-going , and your system is actually fanatically and doggedly intolerant to a mind-blowing degree , and looking for a fight anywhere, everywhere , on any pretext , 24-7 -365.

” No, we gotta pray…it works just as well…maybe even better.

if the incident was the low point of her life experience, she has been blessed, indeed.

The fourth bit of advice you should offer is for women to be a good steward to their bodies…and listen to their mothers…. ”

*sigh * I suppose I can’t take any of the above seriously either , except to take the long view , which is that the best arguments for religion have never been religious arguments , but atheist arguments.

I am amused by these flayings. You are not the first to be subjected to the douche écossaise. Two of the original three musketeers have now had ‘the treatment’, but I don’t think it will happen to the third. Don’t ask…

I’ve been reading CFN faithfully for years, and I could barely finish reading today’s post without wanting to puke. I am completely disgusted with the patriarchical bashing of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that JHK has engaged in for the past several weeks. JHK doesn’t know that Blasey Ford is lying, any more than he knows that Brett Kavanaugh is telling the truth. None of us does. Yet JHK chooses to side with Kavanaugh anyway. I wonder why? Was JHK accused by a woman himself? Is this some sort of personal vendetta that he has against women in general? As a woman myself, that’s how it makes me feel.

JHK must have been watching a different hearing, because based on body language and behavior, Kavaunaugh’s childish tantrums showed a man who was lying. Kavanaugh was belligerant, bloviating, evasive and combative, refusing to answer many of the questions. His obvious discomfort with the line of questioning in regards to his drinking, his projection and defensiveness, suggests that he still has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Meanwhile, Blasey Ford’s steadiness and forthrightness exuded truth and believability.

What JHK has managed to do is manipulate the same whipped-up frenzy of hysteria in his readers that he accuses Democrats of doing. The comments (presumably most or all by males) on this blog are as disgusting as any I’ve seen made by the most ignorant Trumpsters.

How many men are falsely accused of sexual assault? A tiny fraction compared to women who are actually abused. 400,000 rape kits sit untested in this country, while the prosecution rate of rapes is six percent. One in five women in America have been sexually assaulted, while a much higher percentage have been the victim of physical or emotional abuse, sexual harrassment or discrimination at the hands of men. Why would Blasey Ford risk her own life and reputation to lie? It’s no wonder that women don’t come forward when men abuse them. JHK’s witch hunt of Blasey Ford shows how tone-deaf many men are when it comes to these issues. If you are a man, you have no idea what it’s like to be a woman living in a patriarchical society, so you really aren’t qualified to weigh in. The fact that you don’t even try to understand or empathize just makes it worse.

While engaging in the demonization of Blasey Ford, JHK has inexplicably omitted the facts. Kavanaugh lied under oath multiple times, and lacks the temperament, moral character and nonpartisanship required to sit on the bench. His appointment was not based on merit, but was an unabashed power grab by the right. Trump obstructed the sham FBI investigation, which is an impeachable offense. Chief Justice Roberts withheld dozens of ethics complaints against Kavanaugh, which also constitutes obstruction of justice. JHK accuses the Deep State (and by extension Blasey Ford) of incestuous connections, but did you know that Kavanaugh helped get Roberts on the bench? Roberts just returned the favor. If that’s not incestuous, I don’t know what is. Why doesn’t JHK investigate those connections? It seems only fair to give it equal time. JHK’s obvious bias against the left and his apparent hatred of women does nothing to expose the truth.

The fact that JHK chose to tear down a credible woman rather than address any these issues suggests that he is fine with this male abuse of power. Not just fine, but complicit. The illegitimate appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will go down as one of the biggest travesties in American history.

Kavanaugh whined in his opening statement that his life was “ruined” by some nonexistent left-wing conspiracy. Despite his complete and utter lack of fitness to sit on the bench, he was confirmed anyway. Meanwhile, Blasey Ford, whose life was actually ruined because she was brave enough to speak out, is still receiving death threats and can’t return to her own home. Is America a great country, or what?

JHK should stick to what he does best, which is writing about the economy and the Long Emergency. Women’s issues are clearly not his strong suit.

Why don’t we believe her? Because she lied repeatedly. The oh so gentle and respectful female prosecutor didn’t believe her either.

Even if you are right about the ratio of women raped to men falsely accused of rape, is that a reason to throw justice for individuals to the winds? Because that’s the direction we’re going in this country – and you can’t expect White Men not to protest being made into the villains if that is enough to get them locked up on a mere pretext or accusation.

Lots of Blacks believed OJ was guilty yet still supported him getting off. No one expects much of them, but do you really want our whole system brought down to their level?

All three false accusers are now running – they should be brought to justice – if there is any justice left in America.

You say Kavanugh had it coming because of other things he did? Yeah but you see, that’s not how the System works. You sound like a Black who thought that OJ’s victims had it coming because, “They White”.

Even if, I repeat, even IF Kavanaugh did do something back when, what was it? Teenage sexual hi jinx? And to think, 36 years ago!

What has evolved since then is staggering in its disproportion.
The good thing is the resulting backfire re the mid terms. Granted, last time it was a presidential election, but 3 million(?) votes is a lot of votes. We need the turnout.

Hatred, TDS and the Kavanaugh embarrassment will bring the Dems out in droves.

Jim did a great job encapsulating Ford’s Deep State connections.
If we could only nail a couple of those accusers before the election.

Lots of Blacks believed OJ was guilty yet still supported him getting off. No one expects much of them, but do you really want our whole system brought down to their level?

***********************

Too late Janos, the white mans system is actually far worse than black people because its so much more powerful and sophisticated and doesn’t just murder individual black people; but murders peoples minds.

Now the “white mans system” is being turned on white men like yourself and you don’t know what to do?

See how that works?

The face of gang rape and sexual assault is now 50 something white, Christian, family men?

Really?

and people are buying it?

Well of course they are, why not?

If a black person can be qualified for mistreatment and abuse because they are black; whats to stop white people from being qualified for harmed and abused because they are white?

thwack, when you imply black people have a right to kill innocent white people, you’ve taken your sense of entitlement beyond the pale of civilization. Call me racist; I don’t give a fuck

And enough with thinking you’ve lived the Kunta Kinte experience! You probably live a middle class lifestyle and work in an office, typing on a computer in some blue cubicle. Not too exciting, so you have these Nat Turner, Mandingo fantasies complete with killing white men and raping their women. Does that sound about right?

Blacks still rape at ten times the White rate. And White men don’t rape Black women at all, statistically speaking.

Your view of the Law is just that of a stick to beat the White Man with once you take it away from him. That is the Negro mind in a nutshell. But all of the lower races think the same. Maybe if you were with all Blacks, you would take more of an interest in Fairness as such or Justice per se. But typically, more of the same ensues, with Black families and gangs taking the place of other races.

@jloughrey, I just saw an alien land in a corn field. I’m naming you, janet, and Elrond as witnesses. The fact that you all deny it doesn’t detract from my story in any way!

Ford’s accusation is not she said, he said. It’s she said, he and he and he and she said. And throw in a fake therapy session, a fake polygraph, lies about flying and claustrophobia, and a narrative that changes day by day as the days go by.

JS: I ran through the streets looking for an honest woman, despairing that I’d ever fine one – and then I found Beth.

A Victim’s Open Letter…

Dr. Blasey Ford: White Privileged Survivor

by Beth Pierce

This is a #MeToo story. I didn’t think I’d ever write one, because I don’t particularly like the movement. I’ve dealt with my experiences and moved on. But after the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford hearing on September 27, I suddenly felt obligated to tell my story.

As an actual survivor of sexual and physical abuse, I decided to share only a few details of my past, now that victims of abuse like me are being exploited to suit a political agenda. This, I believe, needs to be called out.

I’m a millennial. I was raised in an atheist and feminist household. My dad was absent unless he wanted to hurt us; so we got a restraining order against him when I was 14. I converted to Catholicism in my late teens. I’ve come from real abuse at his hands, both sexual and physical, and I live with a permanent physical disability which he inflicted on me as a baby.

I know something about abuse, in other words, and yet I don’t have words to describe how sick and offended I felt while listening to Christine Blasey Ford use her alleged sexual abuse to try to derail the appointment of a pro-life judge. Why would she do that?

She says she’s a victim. Okay, but a victim of what? According to her own story, nothing happened—at least nothing that is remotely like real abuse.

If her story is true, she was pushed onto a bed, the bedroom of which she had entered freely, and her “attacker” then “grinded” on her for a bit, through several layers of clothing, and then went away, having gone no further.

So, what are we talking about here. She got scared that something bad might happen, but then it didn’t? If this is true, and I don’t care if it is, then she’s a victim of what? She says she’s a survivor? Again, of what? Of being scared for a few minutes?

Perhaps Dr. Ford needs to be told what abuse really feels like? What fear really means? Because judging from her own “testimony”, she clearly has no idea.

When I heard her testimony I actually sat there waiting for the part where it got bad. It seemed the whole country was Team Blasey Ford, so I figured her allegations must be pretty terrible. I waited… but it never got there. It never got bad. She quivered and quaked over a little grinding and shushing, and—worst of all, said she—some laughter. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

There was no rape, no molestation, not even harassment since minors messing around at an underage drinking party in the 1980s hardly rises to that level, and to suggest that it does only decriminalizes the behavior of a pig like Harvey Weinstein. So let’s not go there.

And what was the boy in Ford’s account really going to do with his friend present in the room? Both boys went away laughing, she said, not taking it seriously. Rapists don’t generally treat their object lightly. They attack when you’re alone, in secret, and they’re deadly serious. They dominate completely and subjugate with threats. They don’t walk away, I know this.

Ford’s story is about a boy trying to have some fun with a girl who wasn’t up for it, and it ended without conquest. He’s not a nice kid, whoever he was. He deserved a slap across the face. But a rapist? Only someone who’s never been raped would suggest something so stupid—that callously minimizes what actual rape victims have been through.

So, again, Dr. Ford is a victim of what? Of embarrassment? Some aggressive flirtation? Five minutes of fleeting fear which never materialized into anything more than that?

This is a nothing burger even if you feel like believing her story—which you don’t have to, because no one beside Ford can confirm that her aggressor was indeed Brett Kavanagh, the pro-life SC nominee whose personal life was evidently so uneventful that his attackers have to go all the way back to high school to dig up enough alleged misdemeanors to make him unfit to serve.

What’s this all about? Most women who grew up in the promiscuous 1980s can tell similar stories and yet don’t pretend to have suffered lasting trauma from it. Where is this woman’s case? Why did this high school blip of a story make it all the way the Supreme Court? Have we lost our minds completely?

If this woman couldn’t handle an aggressive come-on from an Anthony Michael Hall character wannabe, how did she handle the culture in which she grew up—the culture in which the sex fiend Madonna was queen of the dunghill? Her story is lifted straight out of a dozen coming-of-age movies from the 1980s, only this one wouldn’t have scored the R-rating of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Dr. Ford’s story is an example of a rather pathetic symptom of the degenerating culture at the time that had come directly from the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s.

So, this woman who claims to be a feminist; who has a job, husband, children; who vacations in Tahiti—she’s the victim of what? How dare she pretend to represent those who have been raped, beaten, cowed, oppressed, made to feel that they were utterly helpless, unlovable, un-wantable, damaged. Blasey Ford, who was hit on at 15, is a survivor? Please!

She is a feminist of the new variety: the privileged white liberal feminists of first world countries who need victim status to feel relevant. They watch The View and shed great big tears over Oprah segments but apparently can’t “do whatever a man can do, only better”. Not at all. They’re not Rosie the Riveter. They’re not even Hanoi Jane. They’re not fierce. Rather than competing with men they can only tattle on them, as part of their decades-long hissy fit that seeks to terminate anything they can’t handle–from babies to men’s rights to now a conservative Supreme Court justice. These are female supremacists, and sexists in the extreme. A bunch of whining teenage girls and crying little babies.

Blasey Ford is a feminist because privileged white liberal women need a cause, too, and in order to have a cause these days you’d better establish yourself as a victim—even if you’re only the victim of some snot-nosed kid who spooked you back in high school.

Now she’s going to use her victimhood to destroy the reputation of a good man, and America—to its everlasting shame—is going to jump on her bandwagon? It’s unbelievable.

Real victims should be outraged by this blatant exploitation. If Ford gets to say #metoo, then the whole MeToo movement has no credibility. Every girl who ever received an unwanted catcall gets to be a victim, and I refuse to stand with such crap!

And while Ford is a pretty questionable victim, Brett Kavanaugh is looking more like a real one every day. I have no special love for the man, but it’s pretty clear to everyone who hasn’t burned a bra that he’s the victim of white liberal privileged feminists, positively panic-stricken that they might lose their right to kill their babies someday.

Judge Kavanaugh, his wife, his two daughters—they must be destroyed because someday, somehow, this man might approve legislation that would force women to assume responsibility for their own sexual activity again, and we can’t have that. So, we need to take this man down… even if that means making a mockery of real sex abuse victims by rending our hoodies over an attempted make-out session between two minors almost 40 years ago.

What’s this really about? The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have admitted it over and over again: Roe v Wade; this is about a pro-life judge; this is about a perceived threat to the momentum of the anti-life establishment. Plus, this is one more way to extend the middle finger to President Trump, while feeling oh-so-self-righteous in the process. We are standing with victims! Look at us stand!

As one brave new feminist scrawled on her picket sign: “Roe-Yes, Kava-Nope!” (Well said, sweetheart, but ever wonder why you care so much?)

And of course, the media are playing these feminists too, since in matters of women’s health (read: “birth control and abortion”), there is no more militant fanbase than the activists posing as journalists over at MSNBC and CNN. The media have sicced their chosen agents on a good man and a pro-lifer, and these agents are “gallantly” standing in solidarity with a woman who says she was seriously traumatized by some dorky kid back in the 1980s.

They get to weep when she weeps and turn her drama into their own and post pictures of themselves on social media, holding cards with self-righteous phrases such as: “I need feminism because patriarchy took my voice!” But no one thinks it’s strange that on one woman’s word alone, a man gets ruined? No more due process? No presumed innocence? Just guilt by accusation? Do they think this will somehow not come back to haunt them? Do they imagine this is somehow not the stuff of anarchy? I wonder who Dr. Ford thinks will be there to protect her granddaughters once this recipe for political and social chaos becomes the norm.

If Ford really was traumatized that night, that’s unfortunate. But she lives in the United States of the Privileged in 2018, and women like her aren’t oppressed. Some people suck, sometimes bad things happen, but grow a backbone, Blasey, and get over it. If this precious wuss is what the mighty feminist movement has produced, then clearly feminism has set women back centuries.

These radical feminists still have a cause at all only because they’ve moved the goalposts. It’s not about liberation and equality; it’s not fair treatment and just wages and strong, independent women. No, it’s just a full-fledged assault on masculinity where women can compete only by eliminating the competition, which means expanding their own rights beyond all reasonable proportions and terminating men’s completely. Now we’re equal!

And of course, safeguarding the “right” to have sex however they want it and then murder the consequences—this is the essence of feminism in 2018.

Yeah, don’t forget—this is all about abortion.

My father wanted me aborted because I was an unplanned pregnancy. My parents were young and unwed and not Catholic, so my mom could have easily been persuaded, but she didn’t go through with it. I don’t think I need to mention how grateful I am.

I’m here today because of a strong woman—my mother, a single mom, a survivor. As a victim of abuse, it’d be a cold day in hell before I’d side with Dr. Ford. In fact, between the two of them, Kavanaugh and Ford, I’ll stick with the pro-life judge. I think he’s got my back a little more than the volatile and unhinged feminists do, or than their willing accomplices in the media which would use my story and that of so many victims to promote their own agendas, without asking any of us what’s actually best for us or what we really want. Because it’s not about us, not really. It’s about them.

If #MeToo gives me a voice, then here’s what I’d like to say: I don’t hate men. I hate BS. I hate manipulation and exploitation. I don’t need to get even with anybody. The man who hurt me is a pathetic loser. But I’ve moved on with my life, grateful for the good men who stood by me when my own father wasn’t there. I don’t want to be angry, I don’t want to stay broken. I want to live in a country where moral standards are respected—standards which exist in the first place to protect innocence and decency and where the victims of the worst abuse of all—abortion—are given a chance to live, even as I was.

I want to live in the security and freedom which come with a God-centered society, and one which regards life as the greatest prize, and every soul as equal. This would be justice for victims. Vindictiveness, polarization, rage, protests—that’s for manipulative men…and women oppressed by their own propped-up victimhood.

No thank you! Time to move on, ladies. As a woman and an actual victim of sex abuse, I stand with Judge Kavanaugh, and I refuse to be represented by Dr. Blasey Ford or any of the other angry activists our pro-abort politicians might trot out to make fools of us all.

Margaret Harper McCarthy is Assistant Professor of Theological Anthropology at The John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and the Family at The Catholic University of America, and Editor of ?Humanum Review.

“This is clear enough when she (Paglia) states: “we have the right to thwart nature’s procreative compulsions, through sodomy or abortion. Male homosexuality may be the most valorous of attempts to evade the femme fatale and to defeat nature.” And “my absolute right to my body takes precedence over the brute claims of mother nature.”

Still, Paglia’s “realism” makes her more aware of the limits of such a project than most feminists. Whether it concern promiscuity, delayed pregnancy for young women, the disregard for the traditional division of labor, or homosexuality and abortion, Paglia’s judgement is clear: “there are certain fundamental principles of human life that return again and again . . . I have serious doubts about whether androgyny can usefully be extended as a master plan for the human race.” Indeed, Free Women, Free Men is littered with apocalyptic warnings about cultural collapse for an age committed to “extravaganzas of gender experimentation.” “There are many parallels between our time and that of the Roman empire. Whenever you get cosmopolitan cultures that are very tolerant and permissive . . . it seems to be the case that such cultures are ripe for collapse.

The book is a mixed bag, to be sure. Still, it offers a much-needed challenge to the assumptions of mainstream feminism. Perhaps more importantly, it offers some caution for traditionally minded women tempted to jump on the latest feminist bandwagon in hopes of selling their (good) moral package. We all agree that rape (when it is rape) is bad, as is demanding sexual favors in exchange for movie roles and promotions. But the motives and “solutions” of those driving the bandwagon aren’t ours. They want androgyny: abstract, disembodied, interchangeable individuals, with no natural relation to each other, no common path, no common project. Is that what we want? Do we really want to promote a world where the natural electricity between men and women has been turned off, either by threat of legal action (for even a mere compliment) or—to pick up on one of Jordan Peterson’s latest challenges—the enforcement of a stricter dress code, of, say, Mao suits for everyone? What will we achieve, if, in our “shock” over the latest revelations of misbehavior, we help to bury the last remnants of a pre-androgynous world? A world in which men and women studying and working together were still recognized to be just that—a world, therefore, of eros, allure, and flirtation, along with the modesty and gentlemanliness that guided these, in courtship, toward a lifelong and fruitful marriage.

She takes the “Hobbesian” view: namely, that sex is a “red flame” caught up with the “deep, dark earth rhythms” of nature: vitality, allure, and glamour but also aggression, power, and conflict. In the case of men, this aggression takes the form of hunt, pursuit and capture, and, of course, rape. In the case of women, it takes another form, chiefly in the form of possessive motherhood. She’s an equal opportunist.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Paglia’s vision is entertaining but you can’t take art history and criticism as prescriptive. Its allusory, for interpretive purposes. A complete Paglian rebuttal to the above would mention the Male’s psychological vulnerability which leads to continuous anxiety. That anxiety isn’t reflective of external events but internal conceptualization. Androgyny’s visibility waxes and wanes. For her, it signals momentous times.

Those momentus times are evident in increasing migrant flows today.

Count on the right to increase on themes against androgyny as they resist migration. Such an effort also signals failure as it always does as a reaction to cultural anxiety.

Migration can and should be addressed through the manifold issues that touch on it- environment, economics, etc. Populism is working toward a solution here, without inviting a sad spectacle of rescuing a mythic masculinity which will implode as soon as it forms.

Androgyny, insofar as it presents as a result of environmental pollution, would be better alleviated with a strong EPA oversight of rules controlling the production, distribution, and release of chemical compounds shown to produce long and short-term damage to male endocrine systems.

Social control of children could be expanded to allow for cultivation of traditionally masculine behaviors, especially in primary school.

We aren’t going to get these kinds of intelligent responses under this administration.Of course, that doesn’t excuse the states, counties and municipalities doing all they can- so will they? The track record indicates we are MOST likely to sacrifice the kids before we cut ourselves off from short-term economic interest. So I doubt it. We’re a couple generations into the dumb.

Haha—JHK “did his homework”, which, in the case of this essay, looks like it amounted to looking at the arrangement of one of his chicken’s entrails left behind by a neighborhood coyote. All these supposed Blasey-CIA links & conspiracies are bullshit, and have been meticulously shown to be false by groups who do REAL homework.

Readers who are bewildered by this new(?) JHK who has abandoned reason, intellectual rigor, and discerning research should give up on him returning to the person who wrote such “The Geography of Nowhere” and “The Long Emergency.” Anger, bitterness, and paranoid delusions seem to have won him over.

Part of this problem lies with the very structure of some projects: the use of insensitive language, thoughtless use of pronouns, assumptions of gender, and even sexualized or culturally insensitive names.

Clearly some people simply do not know what abuse really is. Have you ever been locked literally in a room for hours or maybe days because of “bad behavior”? Have you ever been told that you are completely worthless day in and day out until it breaks your spirit? Have you ever been forced to do things that you did not want to do and could not do anything about it? Have you ever been hit in the face or knocked to the ground for trying to fight back? Clearly NO, because if you were telling the truth about a real assault the emotion and body language is very evident and no fake voice is needed to convey the message. AND she would not be giving up the fight now if she truly believed he needed to be uncovered for the monster he is supposed to be. So I truly do say f*ck Christine Blasey Ford!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In fact SSL, not only have I, but I have been with many others who have been so tormented as well. For what I would say was most of us, it made us stronger and forged the abilities to overcome adversity and concentrate on the higher goal with increased fortitude. Some it destroyed utterly and that will always be the quandary. and I seriously doubt that there can ever be any solution that will make everyone safe, happy, and cared for. There will always be casualties.

That is right Walter. But what I hate about this whole situation is that so many blanket statements are thrown around so casually. In the end there are good men and women and there are evil men and evil women. It is what it is so the best way forward is to take care of one another and do and be the best that you can.

Have you ever been told that you are completely worthless day in and day out until it breaks your spirit? Have you ever been forced to do things that you did not want to do and could not do anything about it? Have you ever been hit in the face or knocked to the ground for trying to fight back?”

Beside being “for our reading pleasure”, which appears to be for only about half of those who comment here, what other purpose does this place serve for those who frequent Cyber Space for information and/or entertainment? To me, at least, it would appear that it is a rectal thermometer strategically inserted to disclose the state of the public mentality and it seems that the mercury is just about to burst through the exposed end of the stick.

If we are a representative example of the state of society’s mentality, which I do believe we are, well I would suggest that we do not have much longer before the fever kills the patient or at best renders its comatose and without hope. Apparently the “I am the Center of the Universe” and the “My Way or the Highway” mentalities have coupled with the gender, race, income and ever other dividing ploy and is successfully turning the masses into an angry mob that hates itself and everyone standing around them. I suppose that “embracing diversity” was a slicker way of saying that the other guy sucks and needs to be attacked.

Our Baby Boomer generation appears to have been the first to start slacking off in a substantial way but those who have followed are even more worthless, non-skilled, and unmotivated. I remember when the phrase “he is all thumbs” was a derogatory statement, but today all the 30 and 40 year olds seem to need is a pair of thumbs and a pinky to pick their noses with because they are not about to do anything that requires that they get sweaty or dirty. Our grandfathers and our fathers built it all, we kept it going and maintained it all (sort of) and those that follow will now use is, abuse it, and then throw it away when it stops functioning. No wonder they need to let so many third world “refugees” in – to do the dirty work, but how can that work out when they simply have to sit there and collect free social program handouts?

Perhaps I am too old, too cynical, but I think it has all turned to shit and besides arguing and fighting one another in every venue possible, nothing else is going to get done to fix anything. Where are the proposed solutions? Who has any answers? Who can achieve any corrections? I think that all the talk of a new civil war is just wishful thinking for as much as a Great Shaking would seem to be required, I cannot see the whiners and moaners getting up off of their dead asses long enough to do even that. Atrophy may be the only possibility.

Maybe. Or there will be a savior who comes in the midst of the insanity and decline. I believe that will happen. Just as much evil as there always is in the world there is always a savior and salvation. Will it be what you want? That is the real question.

Ah, a savior or an anti-savior? Yes indeed, it would appear to be a logical next step. My money would be on the bad guys first and then the good guy later, but is just my opinion. There is certainly room out there for many other possibilities. .

Aha. For all you Revelation afficianados, maybe it indeed is the Second Coming! Complete with the Anti-Christ and Jesus himself. Honestly, what is coming could surely be modeled by the Biblical account.

In John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, a Black man kills two crackers that brutalized his daughter. The story was about his lawyer and his defense of him, successful and in the new South too.

Anyway, one striking part of the story was the attempt by the NAACP and CORE to walk in and take over his defense. The father was so turned off by the arrogance of these politically motivated jerks that he threw them out and retained his local counselor. It really struck me, at the time, how really shallow and manipulating these politicos can be.

If anyone will do anything to stop the abuse of the law that is happening, going after the pawns in the smear campaigns does little. The power brokers that manipulated Ford et al should be the targets for prosecution. All you have to do is listen to Schumer and Feinstein to know where the power source is, and observe the witness manipulation by the two Libtard lawyers while Ford was testifying.

The reason nothing happens and pawns are just discarded? Because if the Dems were seriously in control and putting a Liberal on the court, the GOP people would be doing the same thing! What is good for the goose is good for the gander, the Deep State over all.

Read Sheryl Attkinson’s Smear if you haven’t. The influencer peddlers in DC have joined with lobbyists, the bureaucracy and PR firms to take over the functioning of our government.

As voters, our only power source, do your homework and vote for candidates that are anti Deep State, anti bureaucracy, pro term limits. An anti Deep State party does exist and its ring leader is the current president. The new GOP is growing.

The Founding Fathers were scared to death of an oppressive, over powerful central government and wrote their fears into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Deep State has just about destroyed the intentions of the Founding Fathers in their quest for power. Both sides. Vote against the Deep State and their advocates for Federal control. ( and global control).

Oh yeah, it was absolutely politics. “Not a trial” as they constantly reminded us, what was the function, “Advise and consent”? This was a public trial, of a sort- the Senators had to maneuver to keep themselves from becoming the defendants.

What we witnessed was a chess match, with a sideshow. I for one believe the sideshow was real. Ford’s performance was too imperfect- and Kavanaugh’s a little too perfect.

In my opinion sameness is paramount for a society. So for instance, look at some East Asian countries. They really don’t allow immigration so their societies are more homogenous and at least appear to function quietly and smoothly, for the most part. I don’t think we will ever have peace here in America until we are more the same again rather than many competing tribes. Again, just my humble opinion.

For example, does one love one’s mother because she’s the best mother? Or because she’s your mother – and therefore the best for you? It’s like that with genuine patriotism as well. Or with rational racism. Whites aren’t necessarily the best – but they are the best for each other. All of this type of argument is pure kryptonite for the ideologues. I admit I do compare. The races aren’t equal objectively speaking. But a calm, peaceful argument, simultaneously both rational and charitable, can be made without getting into the comparisons.

More: Our laws are based on values. Our values are based on our Tradition and Religion. Bringing in radically different traditions and religions, like Islam, is a disaster regardless of Race. White Muslims are going to be very problematic. A sane America would reject all Muslims.

Of course the intrinsic differences become important once the Liberals reject the sensible point of view and insist on pushing things with their, “The perceived differences are just your prejudice.” Or “The differences are “just” cultural and they’ll assimilate (or you will!)”.

The differences also matter in the third scenario: The Libertarians who say each individual will just find their own level in our multi-cultural society. This is the pov put forth in The Bell Curve. But the Left won’t accept this either. Once Blacks find their own level at the bottom, the Left and Blacks cry foul. This is not a viable option for just this reason. Never was. Only Whites are individualistic enough to ever consider such a thing – and so many of us trick ourselves by projecting this onto other races and “groups” – like White Muslims, Masons, Mormons, or other White Semitic groups.

To be clear, Thwack: Blacks do excel in most sports and the performance arts. But Blacks themselves know these aren’t as important as “g” or IQ or Smarts – that faculty that leads to science and applied science. Only White Liberals get confused about things like this.

Blacks are particularly their own men when it comes to music, always adapting White music and instruments to their own liking.

Would Blacks discipline themselves in sports without White coaches? Don’t know. Certainly in music they practice – but it’s not so much discipline as love of the thing in itself. Not always the same thing.

Yes Janos is correct. There are Whites that are “other” because of culture and/or religion. And he is exactly correct in saying that Whites are perfect for each other in all situations. People spin his words but it is simple genius hello!

Who is the real loser with the Kavanaugh fiasco. Not the GOP, not the Dems, both are off planning their next debacle.

#meto lost out big time.

Their quest for power over all so crushed the legitimate causes of rebalancing the attitudes of both men and women. Proponents of the legitimate purpose of #metoo, get rid of the Hollywood and D.C. Idiots and start a grassroots campaign to educate both sexes to show mutual respect for each other.

Parents make predators and victims. Number one advocate for good behavior and morality in the family unit is Dad. Number two is Mom. And the interplay between the two sets the attitudes of the kids. Sidebar, contrary to popular opinion today, education aggravates the problem as the peer group pressures infects good kids with maladjusted ones. Morality comes from the home.

Good question. IMO the divorce rate is a symptom of the economic ruin rained down on ordinary families and the consequent breakage of the sexual contract between men and women, but also a result of the notion as JHK sez that anything goes and nothing matters. And the proponents of anything goes and nothing matters will have it that the kids are all right. But I see what I see with my own eyes and I say otherwise. The kids are a screwed up, stressed out mess, not knowing who they can trust and what rules apply.

As far as mutual respect goes, liberals would have it otherwise but it starts with the simple common sense recognition that sexual activity has consequences. I know it’s a “drag” and it all sounds so “uptight” and man, why so many “hang-ups”, but it’s like Ann Landers said a long, long time ago, the rule for young ‘uns when they’re together is all hands on deck and four feet on the floor.

Another comprehensive and moving New York Times today. I recommend anyone in the civilized works too pick up a copy. It includes the science section (Tuesday). Notable articles on Nordics mining stainless steel like a bunch of gnomes and Trump tariffs making their treasure ever more expensive for American companies, a Danish company buying a Maine windpower outfit, the Mexicans have depleted the Sea cucumber population because the Chinese believe that paying up to $300 a pound for slices of the flesh will cure erectile dysfunction. Trump has isolated America in regard to the IPCC, with new projection of 12 years until major climate problems, although most state level projects to limit carbon are going to continue. 2 year old Guatamalan kid shows up in Immigration Court, speaks spanish, disrespecting the court with throwing a fit. Christian fundamentalists Jam the switchboard to request adoption and this close the circle between now and the day her mother put her hands together in prayer and asked the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, to get her into America safely, and not disappear never to be heard from again, like so many other kids sent alone on the migrant trains, who were off course not forsaken and surely must be in the hands of the Most Just and Merciful, and not crammed in a hot and crowded travel-trailer in Oaxaca, waiting to be sold for use as a sex slave or drug mule, because He wouldn’t do that, and besides, Maria wouldn’t believe it if she heard it, after all, she has a second grade education and faith that the rich white missionaries were correct in telling her that, in God, anything is possible.

Also, a black hat shake and bake media manipulation company staffed by former Israeli operatives, Psy-Group, was approached by Trump campaign official in ’16, to solicit dirty tricks like creation of fake online accounts, for social media manipulation. The documents describe “project Rome” which was designed to ability division between rival campaigns and factions. Apparently they thought that people are credulous enough to believe anything they read online, like the moon landings were fake, jet fuel l can’t melt steel beams, and a containment vessel for pressurizing fissile plutonium can’t be practically constructed, meaning Hiroshima and Nagasaki were actually destroyed by firebombing and the world’s been filled continuously for 80 years with footage of chemical explosions and George Lucas designed all external and internal footage of the space station which is a hallucination created as a joint project of Russian and American governments.

There is no comparison. Drudge is a guy in a basement. The Times is a public company with 3,790 employees and a market capitalization of 4.18 billion. Drudge has been operating for 20 years but the Times reaches back to 1851.

That “guy in the basement” gets more web hits than the NYT, as my link shows.

Do you really think that a NYT editorial excusing one of their own carries any weight outside the NYT echo chamber? Can you honestly tell me that if this had involved a white guy posting in a similar fashion, that the NYT would have overlooked these transgressions? This wasn’t some one-off tweet in a temporary moment of insanity; this was tweet after tweet after tweet spanning a long period of time. Sorry but the narrative that Sarah Jeong is a reformed racist just doesn’t fit the facts.

The trade situation today is the result of thirty years of presidents and their administrations giving away the farm (literally) to foreign powers and the business elite as evidenced by the ever increasing deficits in the trade balance. That is one of the main reasons Trump with his America First agenda swept the Midwest. We are the main consumer base for the world and Trump is utilizing that fact to reset the trade balance using tariffs. He would like no tariffs but the other countries have had it so good that they would not stand for it. The tariff imbalances that have existed are criminal.

I am a full believer in global warming. My belief is that the 10 – 12 year prediction may be accurate. The trigger will be two items, the removal of the North polar cap for a significant part of the year and two the defrosting of the tundra in the north esp. Siberia. The ice cap is our air conditioner to exhaust the heat moving up from the equator. It’s removal will accelerate the heating. The tundra is two fold, the first being removal of the air conditioner effect, and two increasing the methane content of the atmosphere, a gas 36 times more heat retentive than CO2. There is bad news arriving soon.

However, what can be done, The hysterical reaction of the Leftist scientists that are sending this message is no help. The problem is 150 years in the making starting with the steam engine and accelerating with the gasoline engine. The real problem is US, each individual who chooses to drive pickup trucks and SUV’s instead of Volts or Priuses. Who buys cheaper food grown on corporate farms. Who participate in the energy exhausting suburban lifestyle, who fly instead of taking the train, Who continue to procreate in spite of warnings of overpopulation. We are the problem! That is why all the Paris accords in the world are not going to do anything except give some liberal politicos ammunition to attack with.

The fix for global warming is so drastic it will never occur until people start dying in droves from its effects. Think about the reality of what is needed. A substitute for 330 million automobiles and a mind set change that vroom vroom is not good. Tripling the electrical generation to accommodate the millions of electric cars needed. Oh yeah, liberals, it will probably have to be done primarily with nuclear. The return of the small farm with organic bases for growing things. The elimination of the commute, and the suburban lifestyle that goes with it. To be replaced with what? Reduction of the world population hopefully by attrition, although more violent alternatives are always available. Needless to say, this all will not be done willingly. That is why Paris is a political ploy, a joke.

Alba,
How many nuclear explosions would be required to equal the debris dispersion of one major volcano…Mt. St. Helens, for example? Cubic miles of the mountain evaporated skyward millions of tons…”Nuclear winter” as a boogyman theme may need to be revisited…as does the “butterfly effect”.

Another study recommended that men anally self-penetrate with sex toys “to become less transphobic, more feminist, and more concerned about the horrors of rape culture.” The name of the study? Going In Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria, Transhysteria, and Transphobia Through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use. Despite the obvious trolling, the paper was published in the “serious” journal Sexuality and Culture.

Well, I’m just pleased that you accept the reality of AGW, JohnAZ, which is better than dimmer bulbs on here who still think (or pretend to think) it’s a fantasy.

In 1939 the UK turned its economy round on a sixpence – it’s amazing what can be done when needs must. And nobody asked the population if they’d mind please shutting those black-out curtains at night, just to be nice.

We have two problems now. The first is that people don’t like being told what to do, even if it’s going to save their children’s and grandchildren’s lives in the long run, and will witter endlessly about hoaxes, fantasies and research grants to put off doing anything that might inconvenience them, and (b) it’s bizarrely difficult to make people understand that AGW is more of an existential threat than the Luftwaffe. Because of that gradually boiling frog scenario, among other things.

I heard recently that Donald Trump is now saying he accepts AGW but says it’s unstoppable and that we can expect an increase of 7 degrees rather than the 1.5 that scientists are urging us to stick to to avoid the worst excesses. So, drill, baby, drill etc. Grandchildren be damned.

I recall many years ago reading Mark Lynas’ ‘Six Degrees’. Lynas, not being some half-arsed journalist as are sometimes quoted on here, worked through thousands of scientific papers to present a chapter on the likely effects of each degree of warming.

I recall that six degrees represented an extinction event. By that time you’ve got so much methane spewing out of not just the tundra but also from currently frozen clathrates on the ocean floor, that you don’t just get further warming but also potential mass asphyxiation on nearby land. We know that because ‘we’ve’ been here before. At least the earth has, but we weren’t here yet. And it happened way, way more slowly than it’s happening now.

So when it reaches Trump’s 7 degrees, it’ll be a bit like that thing of whether a falling tree makes a noise in a forest if no-one’s there to hear it.

>>> which is better than dimmer bulbs on here who still think (or pretend to think) it’s a fantasy.

Few think it’s a fantasy. However, many rightly question if A is the only source—or even the most significant source—of GW. Many rightly question how much is too much, when the point of no return is reached, what will actually happen, etc. Many rightly question the solutions advocated by liberals, solutions that fail to address global population concerns, and that gift the third world a “right” to continue polluting while developed nations are required to endure economic hardship.

I’m not interested in solutions advocated by liberals, but I’ll keep an eye out for solutions tentatively suggested by scientists. I’ll ask them to be really tentative, so as not to go beyond their remit and incur your wrath. I’m mean it’s not as if we’re in a rush or anything.

“Many rightly question how much is too much, when the point of no return is reached, what will actually happen, etc.”

Well you could start with Mark Lynas’ book. But it was written over a decade ago, and, as you know, science updates itself all the time, as it should. We’ve just had a recent update, from the scientists, but it doesn’t do the one-degree-per-chapter thing that ML does. That’s probably too much reality for most people.

But mostly I’d suggest just arguing pointlessly for the next 12 years, so that you can say ‘whew, it’s too late to bother now – what a relief not to have to do anything’.

None of which means I disagree with you about the need to control the population. But since we disagree even about potential approaches, please let’s not go there again.

Even if we argue about the causes, any effort to ameliorate the effects should be taken. The consequences of doing nothing are catastrophic. Unfortunately, the third world (where the population is exploding) is not going to control their output of people, which pretty much means that we’re screwed. When the environment goes in the crapper, it will become “The Camp Of The Saints” multiplied a million fold. Humans, particularly uneducated ones, don’t normally plan down the road especially for what is for them, an abstract event.

No, not at all like Dr Ford’s memory. That just shows your deliberate obfuscation and total lack of understanding of what science is and how it works.

The current honing of the science is about detailed consequences, which are the difficult detail. Broad ranges are less difficult, and you will have noted that the situation at this point is worse than the IPCC’s original scenarios because their estimates have always been conservative. Too conservative. But that’s science for you.

“The UK will be making great strides in this regard once Brexit is complete and the UK can once again control its borders and immigration policy.”

You continue to deliberately misunderstand the effects of Brexit on NON-EU immigration. I am not wasting any time on explaining it to you again. The less obtuse will have picked it up by now.

The politicization of science in recent decades has produced anything but your characterization. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. It’s absolute rubish, and it’s coming from what is considered to be one of the most highly respected scientific journals in the world.

>>> You continue to deliberately misunderstand the effects of Brexit on NON-EU immigration.

I like that turn of phrase: deliberately misunderstand. Another way of putting it is that I simply don’t agree with you. I’m not naive enough to suggest that the UK will use its restored soverign powers to do the right thing. But at least they’ll be in a position to stop the influx, and to do so within one election cycle if necessary.

Yes, yes Green Alba, it’s such a big friggin emergency, yet you’ll give China and India a permission slip to do nothing about their pollution until 2030.

Please don’t repeat your long winded recitation of industrial history and giving everyone a fair and equal chance to pollute the earth. We’ve heard it all before. It carries no weight if the emergency is that dire.

And while the whole planet suffers, those closest to the emissions suffer most, Indian and Chinese people. The globalist billionaires who own the factories are the big profiteers. Why are you promoting their interests, I wonder!?

“By that time you’ve got so much methane spewing out of not just the tundra but also from currently frozen clathrates on the ocean floor, that you don’t just get further warming but also potential mass asphyxiation on nearby land. We know that because ‘we’ve’ been here before. At least the earth has, but we weren’t here yet. And it happened way, way more slowly than it’s happening now.”

Don’t worry, EF. You will not be required to do anything. We appear to be fooked, you and I both, plus our grandchildren. Perhaps I should just go out and buy an SUV or two, and book a few extra holidays to the Galapagos Islands.

@GreenAlba, all I am saying is that what you see in that population growth curve is neither natural nor sustainable. It’s not even a “curve” in the colloquial sense. If your stock shot virtually straight up for an extended length of time, you would do well to remember your own Newton’s third law: what goes up must come down.

The last thing the fragile environment of the Galapagos Islands needs is more tourists. And the last thing the already polluted air of my city needs is another SUV. I was being ironic – or something. As you knew 🙂 .

I can enjoy my life without either of these additions to it. We got all the way to West Yorkshire 10 days ago on a train, complete with medium-sized pooch curled up at our feet (in very reasonably priced first class, I grant you, which has more foot-room, and we were lucky the two seats beside us remained empty, but I’m not going to knock the Senior Railcard if it keeps cars owned by affluent wrinklies off the roads for some of the time).

The upside of not keeping a polluting car on the road 52 weeks of the year is that for a week or two we can throw caution (and exhaust fumes) to the winds and head off somewhere in a hired car of more copious proportions. Our hair shirt is not that hairy. And we are not deprived.

>>> The UK has ALWAYS been in a position to limit the influx of non-EU immigrants. And it does not have open borders.

So now it’s my turn, GreenAlba: are you being obtuse on purpose? I’m not talking about non-EU landing on your beaches; I’m talking about non-EU coming through from EU member nations. I’m talking about leaders like Angela Merkel unilaterally deciding to let in millions of Muslims, who will inevitably have the right to travel through the EU as newly minted German citizens.

The person I just heard on the radio about it termed the prescriptive solution succinctly. Somehow we have to go, full stop, from an economy that puts its energy into building luxury goods to an infrastructure with a future.

Fatalism is understandable. But a few things, one, the global economy is likelier than not to take the lead on this, so that may ease transition. Two, demographics will shift further toward a much younger cohort, more likely to push for political action. And three, the scope and scale of the problem, instead of creating apathy, may provide a nucleus that could exploit the native human instinct to act for a common cause, or common interest.

On that limo crash that killed 20 people in New York… the business is owned by a man with the same name and address as an FBI informant who testified in two terrorism cases. His son ran the company out of a sleazy hotel, with a disordered business license, had tires to a scheme to illegally obtain drivers licenses, and a stable of unsafe vehicles. Between taking the time to press his forehead into a mat in supplication to the diety that rules all, he was chewing gum, pretending not to be an FBI informant tattling on terrorists and people trying to obtain legal drivers licenses so they could start enjoying the American dream.

And in Bulgaria, a former society colony and cesspool of corrupt Slav gangsters, a journalist was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a gang of thugs who were probably employed by the state. Its been a bad decade for journalists, especially the closer you get to Moscow, because freedom of the press doesn’t exist and the population is fed propaganda from an early age and if they started learning how they’re being kept like gerbils in a cage under the heat lamp of Kremlin propaganda they might just kill themselves of with a couple bottles of potato vodka.

But it seemed so fitting and so logical at the time — indeed, it was symbolically true!

I am referencing of course Henry Louis Gates immortal op-ed in the (OMG) NY Times following the unraveling of the Tawana Brawley “matter” in which he acknowledged that her story was false but that it was “symbolically true.”

We need more such elastic concepts. Things have been a bit boring lately.

what about the day in the near future when the last white man is chased off college campus, and the embittered shrews running the show — to keep the meme going — have to start leveling rape charges against minority men, the only men left? Its going to be a sticky situation, to say the least.

Another study recommended that men anally self-penetrate with sex toys “to become less transphobic, more feminist, and more concerned about the horrors of rape culture.” The name of the study? Going In Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria, Transhysteria, and Transphobia Through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use. Despite the obvious trolling, the paper was published in the “serious” journal Sexuality and Culture.

Did anybody else see this? On the capitol steps hysterical woman holding up signs, sobbing, crying, stamping their feet when the results of the Kavanaugh vote was released. But up there with them was this dude with long hair, a beard, shirtless with large breasts hanging out, and wearing a dress.

The symbol of the new Dem party is no longer the party of my blue collar parents or grandparents — steel worker at a blast furnace, coal miner with a lunch pail — but the freak there at the Capitol carrying on and holding a hand printed sign.

Yes BRH, a new, improved, and “progressive” symbol for the Democrat Party is definitely in order. You’ve come close to the mark but let me provide a real choice you can believe in: may I present Rollerina!

As Walter B suggests you must be one of those chivalrous types. So you’re arguing for what, extra-judicial justice?

Ok, I can go with that, I’ve said it before, the girl’s father and brothers and other male relatives doing what needs to be done if the courts and the court of public opinion fall short. After all, do they “believe” their daughter or sister or wife? If so then they must act on it if the police and the courts don’t. Larry Nasser ought to have gotten his lights punched out a long, long time ago and so should have Weinstein. The idea that they assaulted dozens or hundreds of chicks before being brought to heel is utterly a joke and a sad commentary on the state of American manhood and its on-going sissification.

So, if the stories are true about Brad Pitt, all credit to Brad for threatening Weinstein with death if he again bothered Gwyneth Paltrow, his then girl-friend. Not enough Brads in the modern day USA which is why the Larrys and the Harveys get away with it for so long.

volodya, I’m not advancing some solution or other that I think will solve the problem. Likely this problem can never be entirely solved, unless or until our species evolves into something different. But I don’t see how that excuses us from making the effort.

Women today have more freedom, more agency, and more capacity to define their own lives than at any point in history that we know of. That to me is a good thing, a state of affairs worth fighting for. But there’s something in our natures that put them in that box to begin with, and wants to stuff them back in. So what I’m calling for, for a start, is more self-awareness about the fact (and it is a fact) that women face consequences for resisting social and sexual subjection to men.

I’m not taking sides here between Kavanaugh and Ford. That truly is a he-said, she-said situation. I’m also not defending Maoist tactics of denunciation and public shaming. But I strongly believe that the #MeToo movement in general is on to something real. We as a society should start looking for ways to address this issue through legitimate means. If all the legitimate avenues for change get closed off, that’s when you see people turn to the illegitimate ones.

That last “witness” reported to the FBI that she was pressured to change her story by Team Ford…

A friend of Christine Blasey Ford told FBI investigators that she felt pressured by Dr. Ford’s allies to revisit her initial statement that she knew nothing about an alleged sexual assault by a teenage Brett Kavanaugh, which she later updated to say that she believed but couldn’t corroborate Dr. Ford’s account, according to people familiar with the matter.

Efforts made in the 20th Century also account for hundreds of millions, if not billions of human lives made better, freer and healthier, elysianfield. This includes, but is not limited to:

– Liberation of women: starting with the vote, and leading to more general freedom and self-determination for women over the past hundred years.
– The civil rights movement. The plague of Jim Crow was ended, and the Voting Rights Act made the USA an actual democracy for the first time, just 189 years late.
– The end of colonialism and settler-colonialist ideologies like apartheid (Israel being a prominent exception, sad to say).
– Widespread gay liberation. Millions of former pariahs are now recognized as full human beings with the same rights as everyone else.
– Wide swaths of people across the globe enjoyed longer lives and increased security via provision of universal health care. This beloved amenity of civilization functions well wherever it has been attempted seriously (meaning, not the Obamacare kludge). I’m telling you, you guys gotta try this!
– Progressive movements generally achieved important gains, and created institutions that we now take so much for granted that it’s hard for us to understand that they didn’t always exist. Think worker’s compensation, unemployment insurance, and old-age pensions that afford people a measure of dignity toward the end of their lives.

What do all of the above have in common, and how do they contrast with Stalinism (since we know that’s what you have in mind)? They are all specific changes, to a particular element of life; all had broad-based public support; and all were implemented with attention being paid to preserving and extending specific, individual liberties — not plowing over those liberties in pursuit of unlimited utopia. The distinction is clear enough that a moderately-intelligent eight year old can tell the difference, provided they’re paying attention.

TO OZONE:
I know some female martial artists too ozone. Yet, they are indeed a MINORITY amongst females in general. I don’t think that women should be “kept in their natural place”. I’m just expressing a natural fact. Something that current statistics and history would fully back up.

Decades ago I bought my wife a handgun, and safety and firearms training (which we both did together at Front Sight) and also trained her to carry and use pepper-spray. If she is ever accosted, she has the ability to defend herself, yet, will she? I bloody well hope so. (Yet your average woman will cave in quickly when hit with speed, force, violence, impact, pain and injury. Just due to the ways of testosterone, the majority of males have learned since grade school how to take a punch, deal with getting their ass kicked, etc.). Hormones and biology. You can’t change that I’m afraid.

I just expressed the difference between males and females on a biological basis. Common sense, but you obviously don’t have that sense.

“Strong Women” is a big fantasy among the Left. Just view all the Heroines on Netflix now as well as in the Comics. The new Dr Who is a woman I hear. Gnostic transhumanism as Mr Kunstler says. They push it even when the fans don’t want it.

Please don’t watch this if (a) you don’t get British satire and/or (b) you are totally unaware of the patronising public information films the British government used to put out back in black and white days, with toffs in plummy voices telling the proles how to improve themselves. They are a rich source of modern comedy.

LOL Ms. Alba surely you know by now that I love having fun and being a little bit of a ham sometimes. What can I say – I am Southern – so I love to laugh and be just a little teeny weeny lazy – thus needing help with those giant and puzzling decisions ;-)! I will give it a whirl with the grain of salt that British humor can be dry as I am sure you have heard.

Intel agencies tell us that they may not have man-holding-the-bag or smoking-gun evidence to back up what they tell us is iron-clad, Rock of Gibraltar reality, just patterns of events, webs of circumstance that lead to unalterable conclusions like Iraqi WMDs to take one example, or that the Russians hacked DNC servers for another, or that Trump colluded with Putin to win.

Am I mistaken or did some spook say that they use those same methods in determining who to whack? If that’s indeed the case, then it all sounds a tetch shaky, I mean in their determining who lives and who dies.

But then we don’t live in a perfect world, do we Elrond, and sometimes imperfect justice, using incomplete information, marshalled by imperfect officaldom is the best we can do. Right?

But, if that’s so, and we live in an imperfect world of hazy facts, incomplete recollections, personal biases, misleading circumstances, we still have to act and make decisions.

So, given all this, and given that the CIA and their brethren make no apologies for their own methods, then citing what JHK just cited – you all read it – all those otherwise improbable personal associations and utterly ASTOUNDING co-incidences, co-incidences that shouldn’t otherwise randomly occur in the lifetime of this universe because, as JHK sez, DC is the most lawyer infested corner of the USA or maybe the world or maybe the cosmos, maybe we should be forgiven for concluding with a high degree of confidence that this Blasey-Ford accusation was all a sham, ALL of it, top to bottom. That is, if we’re allowed to use the same techniques as those organizations that are – cough – watching our backs.

ESPECIALLY, you know, in an imperfect world where BELIEF, a lot more that corroborated fact, is what counts.

The question being of course, is what do you believe? WHO do you believe? Do you believe Blasey-Ford? Or do you believe that this accusation and subsequent three-ring congressional circus is one of the most cynical ploys in a thoroughly disreputable institution to besmirch a man’s reputation for the purpose of political gain?

volodya, since you mention my name I take it this little screed is aimed at me. But I’m somewhat at a loss to see your point.

To tease out what I can from this rat’s nest of sarcasm, you seem to be saying that since (a) I accept we live in an imperfect world, then (b) I must accept the reasons the CIA gives when it does things like drone bombing of civilians — because that’s the best they can do, based on circumstances and the available information. But accepting that, you go on to say, means I should (c) consider the drama around the Kavanaugh nomination to be a disreputable sham.

What I’m at a loss to understand is how the conclusion (c) is supposed to follow from (a) and (b). I just don’t get it. What’s more important is that (b) is horseshit. What I accept isn’t (b), it’s (p): bombing of civilians is a criminal act. All countries engaged in such activity should cease doing so immediately, submit those individuals most responsible for criminal prosecution by lawfully-constituted authorities, and pay restitution to the victims. That’s my position, and you can quote me on it.

As for who I believe and why, I didn’t watch much of the testimony and it’s pretty much irrelevant now that Kavanaugh has been confirmed. That said, I find it plausible enough that a 17-year-old rich kid liked to party with his buddies; that in doing so, he made a drunken attempt to force himself on a 15-year-old girl; that this made a far more lasting impression on the girl than it did on the boy; and that many years later the girl, now a woman, would contact her Congressional representatives and want to tell her story upon learning that the boy, now a man, was about to achieve a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. Finally, I find it plausible that the opposition party would be motivated to use all this for its own purposes (though on that score, I find it curious that the whole thing stayed under wraps until late September, even though Sen. Feinstein had Dr. Ford’s letter no later than early August.) If the fact that I consider all that to be plausible disturbs you, then by all means keep ranting.

When you ask what I believe, volodya, the answer isn’t (a), (b) or (c). What you’re missing is (p), which stands for principle. Above, I gave one example of my principles. Another is to discount what people claim their motives are (the louder and shriller, the more they need to be ignored), and look at what they’re actually doing. When I look at the Kavanaugh nomination in that light, I see the Republican party achieving a long-sought political goal, namely locking up the Supreme Court; the Democrats doing their usual piss-poor job of being an opposition party; and two individuals, both from privileged backgrounds, but one of whom understands the other much better than he understands himself.

No Elrond, you were named in this post for your fool-assed citing of that article. You used it in response to my assertion to go to the cops in a case of sexual abuse.

See, it’s not a perfect world Elrond, everyone past the age of about ten knows this, but why you’d discourage women from going to law enforcement is known but to you.

You missed the point, concluding that I’m justifying what the CIA does.

The idea is simply this, that the Deep State is doing whatever it can short of rifle shots to up-end this presidency, that the methodology the Deep State uses to justify its ends is being used by people such as Kunstler against the Deep State to expose its corruption.

Principle Elrond? OK, well, here’s one for you, the longer you sit on a story of abuse, the less likely you’ll get justice. How’s that for a principle?

Here’s another, this one following from the first, if a girl gets abused, she should tell her parents, her grandparents, her boyfriend, whoever she has to, and then she should GO TO THE COPS. SOON.

Here’s another, if you think going to the cops doesn’t work and you want justice, then extra-judicial justice is the way to go ie boyfriend, father, brother, husband beating the stuffing out of the miscreant.

Out of this sorry-assed mess there’s two main things I can’t live with 1) women saying nothing when they’re abused and then speaking up years or decades later and 2) supposed MEN, and nowadays you have to use that term extremely loosely, abrogating their responsibility to protect wives, daughters, sisters, girlfriends. Guys like Weinstein and Nasser were obviously utterly unconcerned about justice being inflicted on them by male relatives of their victims.

As my wife sez, what underlays all this is cowardice, that of men but including that of women, because if a woman doesn’t speak up when an incident happens, more women get abused by the perp. You can make arguments either way about which is most corrosive to the social fabric. Because if men don’t act in defense of their female relatives you can count on more abuse like you can count on the rising and setting sun.

Doing nothing is intolerable, waiting decades to speak up is intolerable, the Deep State undermining election results is intolerable. There’s a lot that’s intolerable in this, flaccid commentary advocating do-nothing shoulder shrugging the least of it, but what is absolutely intolerable is using an incident of sexual abuse that allegedly happened decades in the past, with no police record of a complaint and no corroborating evidence, in aid of political ends.

This is no way to live life. And if you, as a man of principle want to elevate that to the level of fundamental truth, I’m all for that too.

volodya, I stopped reading at the point where you yet again repeated the falsehood that I “discourage women from going to law enforcement”. Like exscotticus, you’re in your own world. At best, you need lessons in remedial reading comprehension, but in any case I’m done with this.

And if Charles Blow really thinks that the Democratic Party really is looking out for Black people, and if he really thinks that “progressivism”, like the Democratic Party that espouses it, is really about “progress” rather than about entrenching existing wealth and privilege among a small cohort that lives mostly along the coasts, then I start wondering if there’s a way to make a buck off somebody so oblivious.

Today the news feed is full of reports of Trump’s victories, provoked by his main victory – the appointment of Judge Kavanaugh as Justice of the US Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, when dealing with such an enemy as Hillary Clinton, you can’t relax, celebrating victory over her.

This victory gives us, the citizens of Putin’s Russia and Trump’s America, reason to think about what Trump will do right after a more or less decisive victory over Hillary Clinton, when he for the first time takes the helm of US state policy and starts to steer it without looking back at the Mueller Commission, the Deep State and Bastinda, the Great and Terrible, but without being able to give up responsibility for his and only his decisions and turns of this policy.

And as far as I understand, if this victory of Trump, which we witnessed last Saturday and today, is indeed more or less decisive, then today, in the afternoon, he undoubtedly will summon Gina Haspel, who he recently appointed as the director of the CIA – the chief specialist on Russia of this very influential organization and immediately after US Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein was demonstratively invited to fly with the president on Air Force One, and not on Marine One helicopter like on September 28, when no one or almost no one knew anything.

And today Trump will ask Gina Haspel one single question.

Who exactly in the CIA was responsible for the glorification of Nicholas the Second, and who exactly in the Moscow Patriarchate is an agent recruited by the Clinton CIA?

And depending on her answer, he will make a decision about American policy in Ukraine and in Russia, based on inner conviction, for which he paid dearly, that a CIA agent cannot be a real Christian.

Not a peep from Craig. But I was rather expecting an update from you, Finca. Time was you wouldn’t shut up about it.

Like I always say, if you don’t know, just say you don’t know. As I said quite a few times under that post. It’s been amusing re-reading the posts of all the people on here who *knew*, though, and the few who admitted they didn’t (mid-March if anyone needs reminding of how certain they were about Uncle Vlad’s good intentions).

And all the while the GRU’s falling on its arse all over the place, Netherlands included. Tut, tut, Vlad. Someone got too cocky.

I gather it’s just not being reported on Russian state telly though. How weird, with it being a modern, open state like any other an’ all. Time was they wouldn’t shut up about it either.

And will the lesson be learned? Will it heck as like, as they say down Yorkshire way.

And will even one person on here come back and say ‘maybe I was a bit hasty’?. Will they ‘eck as like.

I was even accused of being a bl**dy MI-6 stooge or something, for gawd’s sake. And no, I won’t forget, even with my tissue-thin bonhomie.

Well, the Dutch government is coming down hard on Putin & Russia, have even issued a few indictments to Russian operatives. Now let’s see the Dutch serve the warrants on these men who are inside Russia’s borders.

Perhaps they’ll send their fully unionized Dutch army toward Moscow to apprehend the rascals, a longhaired, rag tag force of transvestites, women, homosexuals, Muslims, and a few Dutch non coms (representative of western Europe as a whole). They’ll take the same route Napolean and Hitler took.

Undoubtedly Putin is shaking in his boots, and the hard men and grim faced generals in the Russian defense ministry are peeing their pants.

As ever, brh, if there’s a wrong tree to be barked up, you can be counted on.

So, what exactly are your detailed criticisms of the British Army in operation? It’s always seemed pretty professional to me, despite a few black spots on its reputation – I just don’t always agree with what it’s asked to do.

And I certainly don’t want it getting into a war with Russia. But Vladimir Putin caused the death of an innocent British national on British soil and I’m not hearing one person on here backing down on their ‘Russophobia’ this and ‘Theresa May’ that and being man enough to say ‘yeah, sometimes we get so enamoured of our clever musings that we end up right up our own false-flag-loving arses like ovine 15-year-olds, who thought just because Porton Down was a few miles away, etc. etc.’

You don’t get it, do you, brh? Putin may not be shaking in his boots looking at the British army. but that’s not the point for Vlad. Vlad’s a democracy-hating demagogue, who sees himself as Russia incarnate, and it’s the RUSSIAN people he needs to worry about. There was an excellent discussion on Newsnight last night, with people who actually knew what they were talking about – you can just tell – as opposed to the Putin Admiration Society that strutted its stuff on here last March.

The (Russian) Professor of Russian Studies from whichever university pointed out that the internet is only semi-censored in Russia, unlike the situation in China. So the GRU’s antics in foreign parts will get around eventually, despite the state TV blackout.

There’s a growing resistance in Russia and it was some very brave homegrown journalists that dug out the information on the two Salisbury incompetents, at serious risk to themselves, as with all serious journalists in Russia. And all from open-source information, so there was nothing stopping the know-it-alls on here from figuring it out themselves. But it didn’t fit their narrative, so they didn’t bother. And so it goes…

What I want to see, brh, is Putin losing face in his own country. And that will happen. You can only fool most of the people for a certain length of time. And then I want to see proper open elections where Vlad doesn’t remove all serious opposition from the fray before it starts.

But you witter on about homosexuals and Muslims if it keeps your peripheral bits warm.

The men on this site aren’t even man enough to say they got it entirely wrong, so don’t make me laugh (but the first one who does so gets my respect).

And, by the way, you’re being repetitive. We had exactly this conversation already, but just with ‘plenty of ladies in fashionable, tight fitting uniforms in the ranks’ – you left out your obsessive interest in transvestites and Muslims. And my answers are there too. They haven’t changed much.

I’d be happy to give you a detailed criticism of the British army GA if you care to hear it. The British Fighting Man has always been a tough, determined fighter, having learned their lessons well from the Romans before them. One of the things that have cost them in battle however is a blind obedience to follow stupid orders and blatantly incompetent leaders. Originally they had nothing but success because the British navy was clearly superior to all others and the enemies that the Brits were fighting were mostly armed far more primitively than the British. I would pose that the greatest failure of the British Military was that wealthy dandies could buy their way into positions of leadership rather than be promoted through ability.

While Wellington fought a brilliant campaign against Napoleon in Spain, the final victory over La Grande Armee was do to the murder of the French cavalry at Quatra Bras at the hands of Marshal Ney and Napoleon’s failing abilities to oversee operations, due partly to his failing health.

The Elphinstones had a long history of ineptitude topped off with Elphy Bey’s bloody mismanagement of the Afghan Campaign in 1842. That bungled mess was even worse than the one America is in today or the Russian debacle.

During the 1st and 2nd World Wars once again the fighting men displayed the ingenuity and toughness that has always exemplified their ranks. British “leadership” was none existent however and was responsible for the murder of millions through their stupidity. I won’t even dignify Bernard Montgomery with the long, stinging criticism that he deserves..

The American fighting men learned much from their British cousins, but I do believe that they were always more able to operate around some of the foolishness that they might have been ordered into doing. American leadership had many, many examples of not only bravery, but ingenuity and ability, especially during the Civil War. While there were more than enough incompetents in the 1st and 2nd WW’s, America WAS able to filed some of the finest leadership ever seen as well.

In the end, war is the greatest evil that man can perpetrate upon the species and I will not glorify it, but in looking back over history with a critical eye, is does make for some interesting studies in what brings out both the best and the worst of mankind.

I hope you do not take offense, for you Scots were some of the toughest fighting people on the Earth and your ancestors certainly gave the English their share of defeats in some of the toughest terrain ever fought over. I think that the addition of the Scottish soldiers to the British army was probably the backbone that kept them at the top of their game for so long.

Thank you, Walter. I was thinking rather of more current scenarios (I think the calibre of generals has improved!) but I don’t disagree with you on any of that and certainly don’t take offence. I was really asking for something concrete to back up brh’s inferences about gay and transgender fops turning the military into a bunch of pussies, a perception of which he would soon be disabused, I think, if he spent time with a regiment or two on active duty.

We are in complete agreement in our attitudes to fighting unnecessary wars in the first place, which is why I can look at Putin causing the death of a British woman who seems to have been greatly loved by her friends and family but can think of nothing more obscene than thinking the solution to this behaviour is risking further deaths in some kind of deadly playground feud. I’d settle for the smirk being wiped of his face by other heads of state seeing a man without honour when they’re negotiating with him and him seeing that reflected in their eyes.

The incompetence of the WWI generals has been legendary within the UK itself since that time, sometimes to the point of exaggeration, if that were possible.

But there were also many brave and idealistic young men from the public schools (British, not American sense – Eton, downwards…!) who were brought into the conflict as officers and whose high ideals were exploited by those who had less to lose.Many of those died bravely in the same horrific circumstances as their men.

The UK is a tiny post-colonial country without the resources it once had (not all its own, clearly), but still – for the moment – the fifth largest economy in the world.

It needs to find a way to shake off the delusions of imperialistic grandeur from which a minority still suffer, while taking its (smaller) place in the world with appropriate responsibility. Not hanging on the apron strings of its former colony and trying to curry favour by aiding it in its ill advised wars should be part of that, but we will have to see how that works out with the Atlanticists who led the Brexit campaign.

Anyway, Walter, I think we both hope for wisdom to prevail and keep the young men and women of both our countries out of senseless wars. I appreciate your thoughtful posts, even though we have fallen out a few times. And I appreciate that you don’t jump on my posts for the sake of it like some of my regular rottweilers unless you have something useful rather than carping to say. Slàinte 🙂

Ah GA, that is because I prefer discussion over argument and I do my best to respect the opinions of others even if I do not like what is being said. As far as the gay and transgender in the military issue is concerned, sexual issues and related misconduct have always been a huge problem for the officers in keeping the men in line and serious problems, long before the homosexual issue became popular. I do not believe that the homosexual addition was much of an additional burden to the “normal”, usual sexually related problems went, go, and will continue to go into the future.

The transgender issue has a serious complication, at least as far as those who enter into the service and then decide to undergo the procedure at the government’s expense. From what I am told by my son-in-law, an E-5 in CID, the treatments and medications that the series of operations and medications require put the patient out of duty for up to two years. So if a person wants to undergo the change at their own expense and then enter the service, all well and good. To expect the taxpayers to foot the bill and then get nothing in return for two years, well the problem is not only obvious, but frankly not something that should be encouraged to undergo.

It may be a joke in poor taste for those who have not served, but when speaking about some other group that you may have issues with, it was a common quip to state, “Oh well, they’ll stop a bullet just as well as the next guy”.

I am certain that you and I can cohabit this place in peace, even though I may be a bit jealous of the beautiful country in which you live. The lack of hardwood forests, however, is something that I simply could not endure for long. For as William Manchester noted in “The Arms of Krupp”,

“The primeval forest had a profound effect on the people themselves, and it may be the most important single key to the mystery of why the Germans have behaved as they have. …give a German the afternoon off and he will pack a lunch, assemble his family, and vanish into the trees.”

The rate of Homosexual rape has skyrocketed ever since the military has allowed them to come “out”. I don’t know if that stems from more enlistment or just the ones already there feeling more comfortable to act out.

I agree with you that paying someone to take an entire two years off at the taxpayer’s expense while in the armed forces does not seem reasonable. I don’t know what the answer is overall in these situations as, like all of us on here, I’ve been lucky enough to be happy in my own skin.

I am also happy to take your word for it, since it is based on experience rather than prejudice and hearsay, that there will be some problems anyway gender-wise. I am not in a position to judge how those problems may be gauged against the wish of women to serve their country in the way they have chosen. There have certainly been rape cases here – and cases where women have been intimidated into not reporting male colleagues for their behaviour. And I’m assuming inappropriate behaviour is not always and only instigated by the men, although common sense and experience suggests that there’s a weighting in these matters.

I do recall one person on this site (and I’m pretty sure I remember who it was – his views on other matters concerning his fellow humans aren’t unrelated) speculating on whether female military personnel were ‘passed around’ the men. No suggestion of agency on the part of the women – and no hint of shame or even (sick) humour in asking the question. If only I could say the asking of the question was unbelievable, but sadly I can’t even say it was that surprising.

On happier matters, I like trees too (although I realise you more than ‘like’ them). Partly for themselves and partly for the welcome shade, as I’m not a fan of being baked.

But as an island dweller, it’s mostly the sea for me, although it has to be the opposite of tourist-strewn beaches where people try their best to turn wrinkly before their time. There are advantages to a cooler climate – there’s no temptation to turn our most beautiful coasts into the Costa Brava.

Ridiculously entitled Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon
the study was published in Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, a highly ranked journal that leads the field of feminist geography.

I was watching Soledad (what a name!!) O’Brian’s show on NBC the other morning, she was interviewing some guy — a do gooder agency head — from NCarolina about the hurricane and its aftermath who claimed “women and minorities were hit the hardest”.

And he wasn’t joking, in fact was very earnest when he made the claim.

At any rate this Kananaugh story will fade and hardly be mentioned as little as a month from now. 100 years ago this week the largest land battles in human history up to that time were being fought out in NE France as the weight of the 2 million strong AEF was brought to bear against the mighty German army, as it slowly retreated to its western borders. WW1 was coming to its violent end, with 13 million dead, entire empires toppled, and Bolshevik Russia and Nazi German looming on the horizon.

Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of casualties just in these few months. Heard anybody mention it lately?

“Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no representation.”